Yep, another .io game. What can I say? They’re addictive. (See my post on Narwhale here.) I’m not entirely sure what to call this one; when I was introduced to it we all called it Slitherio, with various pronunciations thereof, but for the sake of consistency I’ll just call it Slither.
Slither is a slightly less obvious name than Narwhale, but only just so. You are, likely unsurprisingly, snakes. In Slither, the goal isn’t so much to kill as it is to grow, and killing happens to be a convenient way to achieve that goal. To grow, you “eat” glowing dots, by which I mean the snake follows your mouse cursor and if it runs over a dot the dot disappears and your snake gets longer.
You can loop back over yourself just fine, allowing maneuverability accurate to snakes, but if you run into someone else, you die. When a snake dies, they fade into a large pile of super bright glowing dots, which are worth more than the random ones lying around. This is why a lot of players (not including myself) go on the offensive: killing other snakes is the fastest way to grow. Of course, it’s also dangerous, because there is the possibility that while trying to get them to run into you, you ram into them. That’s how I usually get kills; some overzealous little snake tries to corner me and self-destructs. And, I mean, you don’t just leave that perfectly good pile of points lying around, you know?
There is a trick that is, I’ve found, largely only useful to the offensive players, and that’s speeding up. When you left-click and hold, you go at an enhanced rate of speed, allowing you to dart in front of someone or, on the rare occasion I use it, to get out of a coil before it forms. A coil is a trick larger snakes use involving trapping a small snake entirely in a full circle and slowly closing the circle until the snake inside, who has no choice but to keep doing loops inside and will, if the maneuver is executed right, eventually have no room and run into the larger snake, at which point there’s a nice, concentrated pile of super-glowies (yes, I just made that up) that nobody else can get to. Anyhow, back to darting — darting has a price. When you do it, you leave a trail of small glowing dots behind you, which are subtracted from your body mass. Basically, if you’re going to use this move, make sure that what you’re darting for is worth more than the energy you lose to get there.
There are a couple of other things, like being able to choose your skin on the main screen, and the leaderboard in the top left corner, but those aren’t really important. I do suggest paying attention to the mini map in the bottom left corner if you’re having trouble finding enough stray glowing dots. It illustrates the map, where you are, and where the dots are concentrated, which is almost always the center.
Best of luck!
