 Davidson wanted to achieve the same animation quality and humour seen in "Lemmings", which led him on employing worms as characters for his project after delving on various experiments through Deluxe Paint.With the addition of worms into his ideas and inspired by a Blitz BASIC programming competition held by "Amiga Format" magazine, Davidson renamed his project from "Artillery" to "Total Wormage" (possibly in reference to Midway's "Total Carnage"), featuring 55,000 levels and publications compared it with both "Lemmings" and "Cannon Fodder" due to its visual style and thematic, which Team17 project manager Marcus Dyson claimed said "cross" was planned from start.However, Davidson's entry for "Amiga Format" did not win the competition nor did reached any place for classification.