The addictive browser game comes to mobile

Agar.io is one of the most addictive games you can play on your computer, and now you can play it wherever you want with this official mobile version.

Eat or be eaten

Agar.io is an online multiplayer game with a very simple premise. Choose a name, and you’ll appear onscreen as a colored cell, on a grid populated by smaller cells and other players’ cells. You increase the size of your cell by eating smaller ones, which you do simply by passing over them. The point of the game is to survive and become the biggest cell, but the bigger you are, the slower you move, meaning smaller cells can outrun and out-maneuver you.

While the pace of the game is gentle, as your cell gently floats around guided by you, you are under constant threat of being eaten. If you get eaten by another player, it’s game over, and you’ll start again as a tiny cell. It’s surprisingly compulsive.

Some cells are huge and well established, meaning that you can encounter them for days on end – there is a sense that it’s possible, eventually, to be too big to fail – and the developer needs to find a way to fix this so players can’t just sit in games taking up space.

Minimalist and addictive

You can choose whatever name you want, but certain names will trigger special skins. Country names will make you appear as that country’s flag, for example. Unfortunately you can’t upload your own skins.

Your cell is easy to control: simply point in the direction you want to float. There are two additional controls that add to the simple strategy of Agar.io. You can shoot half your mass ahead of you, which can be a neat way of surprising opponents, and you can also split your mass into two. There are also spiked immovable cells scattered around, that burst your cell in to many smaller ones, making you very vulnerable all of a sudden.

The graphics are functional at best, but do nothing to distract you from the task of hunting and avoiding others.

Agar.io on the go

It’s great to see this addictive browser game come to mobile platforms. Agar.io seems a little more polished on Android and iOS than the original browser version, which gives us high hopes for the next version of the game, which is coming out on Steam for PC.