Agar.io | |
---|---|
Publisher(s) | Miniclip |
Designer(s) | Matheus Valadares [1] |
Platform(s) | Browser, Android, iOS, iPadOS |
Release | Browser 28 April 2015 [2] Android 7 July 2015 iOS, iPadOS 8 July 2015 |
Genre(s) | Casual |
Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
Agar.io [lower-alpha 1] is a massive multiplayer online action game created by Brazilian developer Matheus Valadares. Players control one or more circular cells in a map representing a Petri dish. The goal is to gain as much mass as possible by eating cells and player cells smaller than the player's cell while avoiding larger ones which can eat the player's cells. Each player starts with one cell, but players can split a cell into two once it reaches a sufficient mass, allowing them to control multiple cells. The name comes from the substance agar, used to culture bacteria. [3]
The game was released to positive critical reception; critics particularly praised its simplicity, competition, and mechanics, while criticism targeted its repetitive gameplay. Largely due to word of mouth on social networks, it was a quick success, becoming one of the most popular browser and mobile games in its first year. The mobile version of Agar.io for iOS was released on 8 July 2015 and Android on 7 July 2015 by Miniclip. The browser version was released in June 2015 by CrazyGames. [4] Agar.io has inspired similar web games called ".io games", including games with a similar objective but different characters, and games that incorporate elements of other genres like shooter games. [3]
The objective of Agar.io is to grow a cell on a Petri dish by swallowing both randomly generated cells, known as "agar", which slightly increases a cell's mass, and smaller cells, without being swallowed by even larger cells. [5] The browser version currently holds five game modes: FFA (Free-For-All), Battle Royale, Teams, Experimental, and Party. The mobile version of the game includes Classic (like FFA), Rush Mode, and Battle Royale. The goal of the game is to obtain the largest cell; players must restart from a small cell when all their cells are eaten by larger players or fountain viruses. Players can change their cell's appearance with predefined words, phrases, symbols, or skins. [6] The more mass a cell has, the more slowly it will move. [7] Cells will gradually lose a small amount of mass over time. [8]
Viruses are green, spiky circles that split cells that consume them into many smaller cells, rendering them vulnerable and attractive targets to other players. Players can hide under viruses if their cell is small enough and their name short enough. Viruses are normally randomly generated, but players can also cause viruses to split in two by "feeding" them mass—typically in the direction of another nearby cell which the player wants to consume. [8]
Players can split their cell evenly into two (if the starting mass is odd, the cells’ masses will differ slightly), to a limit of 16 cells at once. One of the two evenly divided cells will be shot in the direction of the cursor when the space bar was pressed. This can be used as a ranged attack to shoot a cell in order to swallow other smaller cells or to escape an attack and move quickly around the map. [9] Split cells merge back into one cell if a bigger cell of the same player consumes it. Aside from feeding viruses, players can release a small fraction of their mass to feed other cells, an action commonly recognized as an intention to team with another player. [8]
Agar.io was created by nineteen-year-old Brazilian developer Matheus Valadares, written in JavaScript and C++. Valadares shared an IP address to the game for playtesting on the 4chan video game board /v/ and game development forums, before releasing it on the domain agar.io on 28 April 2015. It is named after agar, a substance used to grow cell cultures. [10] [11] Valadares continued to experiment with adding new features—experimental mode was created specifically for this purpose. [12] He thought about adding more complex biological features like photosynthesis and mitochondria, but ultimately decided to strip the game down to its current simple mechanics. In-game advertisements covered server costs. [13]
Valadares never marketed Agar.io outside of his single post on 4chan, where he received feedback and users formed "cartels" to get on the in-game leaderboard. [13] Its initial success is instead attributed to its popularity among online content creators such as YouTubers and Twitch streamers. Only a week later, the YouTube channel Vinesauce uploaded a gameplay video of Agar.io. On 30 May, PewDiePie, a YouTuber who then had over 42 million subscribers, uploaded the first of nine Agar.io videos and called it his "new favourite game". However, he stated in the video that his fans had been requesting an Agar.io video for a long period of time—it had already become popular via word-of-mouth across social media. [10] [11] [14] [lower-alpha 2] Dedicated Agar.io YouTubers saw their subscriber counts quickly rise. [15]
Commentators also suggested Agar.io's accessibility as a free browser game, as well as the addictiveness of its simple and intuitive mechanics, as reasons for its unexpected success. [11] [14]
In March 2016, Agar.io videos reached two billion views on YouTube. [15]
Digital Trends said in 2021 that Agar.io still maintained an active core fanbase. [5]
After meeting with him in Lisbon, mobile game publisher Miniclip began working with Valadares at the end of April 2015. They were attracted by Agar.io's wide appeal; the game already had five million daily players and Miniclip executive producer Jamie Cason stated that their staff were all playing it within a week. [3] [14] Miniclip released mobile ports of Agar.io on the App Store and Google Play on July 8. [10] It became the number one app on the App Store in the United States, United Kingdom and 32 other countries. [16]
Agar.io was praised for the addictive nature of its simple gameplay and graphics. PC Gamer included it on its list of the best browser games. [17]
Engadget described the game as "a good abstraction of the fierce survival-of-the-fittest competition that you sometimes see on the microscopic level." [18] TouchArcade praised its simplicity, strategic element, and "personality". [19] It was chosen by SFGATE as App of the Week in August 2015. [20] Criticism was mainly targeted towards its repetitiveness and the controls of the mobile version. Tom Christiansen of Gamezebo was mixed on the game, saying that there was "nothing to hold my attention" and that it was "highly repetitive, overall". [21] Pocket Gamer , reviewing the mobile version, described its controls as "floaty". [22] [23]
Game journalists also noticed that the ability to choose usernames and skins enabled players to declare their support for geopolitical causes and figures in-game. Some even formed alliances with players supporting the same causes. Others adopted internet memes and online platforms as their skins, as well as offensive usernames. [19] [24] One reviewer jokingly recounted: "I've ... seen the Earth be swallowed by Pubes, Steam absorb EA, and France split in two and flee from Mars before being eaten by Your Mom's Ass (which was, quite frankly, enormous)." [7]
In the weeks leading up to the June 2015 Turkish general election, Kotaku noticed that players using names related to Turkish politics were prevalent and often cooperated against other political parties. [6] [25] An article in the journal Games and Culture argued that the feature was the main reason for Agar.io's success. It noted that Agar.io provided a platform for competing ideologies in a "survival of the fittest" simulation when they would instead be shut down on social media. In an effort to make the game more commercial, Miniclip improved moderation and removed the Swastika and ISIS skins, a move which was described as furthering the game from its original 4chan audience—Valadares himself had refused to remove the Nazi skin on Reddit. [10] [11]
Because it was frequently propagated through social media and broadcast on Twitch [7] and YouTube, [26] Agar.io was a quick success. The agar.io website (for the browser version) was ranked by Alexa as one of the 1,000 most visited websites [27] and the mobile versions were downloaded more than ten million times during their first week, [28] and 113 million times as of December 2016. [29] During 2015, Agar.io was Google's most searched video game. [30] It was Google's second-most searched game in the United States in 2016. [31] A 2015 press release by Miniclip stated that Agar.io was listed as the fifth top game on YouTube's list of top games. [32]
Inspired by Agar.io's success, Steven Howse released the snake-themed Slither.io in March 2016. The game soon reached the top 10 most downloaded apps on iOS and Android, buoyed by the similar word-of-mouth and attention from YouTubers that had propelled Agar.io. By June, Slither.io had hit over sixty million daily players. [33] It eclipsed Agar.io's popularity, [5] pushing it to second place to become the most Googled game of 2016. [34]
The rapid rise of Agar.io and Slither.io led to the beginning of a new genre of browser games, dubbed ".io games" for the domain name they use. Characterized by simple graphics and gameplay in a free-for-all multiplayer arena, .io games received around 192 million visits in 2017. [3] [11] [5] Many .io shooters launched after Slither.io—Valadares released Diep.io in July 2016. Miniclip also began developing new .io games. [3] [35]
Adobe Flash was, except in China, a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich internet applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players.
A browser game is a video game that is played via the internet using a web browser. They are mostly free-to-play and can be single-player or multiplayer. Alternative names for the browser game genre reference their software platform used, with common examples being Flash games, and HTML5 games.
Miniclip SA, simply known as Miniclip, is a Swiss mobile game publisher and former browser game website that was first launched on 30 March 2001. It was started by Robert Small and Tihan Presbie with a budget of £40,000. In 2008, Miniclip was valued at over £275 million. In 2018, the company gained over $400 million in revenue through its mobile gaming hit, 8 Ball Pool.
Free-to-play video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content without paying or do not require paying to continue playing. Free-to-play is distinct from traditional commercial software, which requires a payment before using the game or service. It is also separate from freeware games, which are entirely costless. Free-to-play's model is sometimes derisively referred to as free-to-start due to not being entirely free. Free to play games have also been widely criticized as "pay-to-win"— that is, that players can generally pay to obtain competitive or power advantages over other players.
A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone, tablet, PDA to handheld game console, portable media player or graphing calculator, with and without network availability. The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994.
Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 124,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchased by GameStop Corporation in 2010 before being acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB in 2017.
Sneeze is a 2009 browser game created in Adobe Flash. In every level, the player can sneeze only once and is awarded points based on how many people they are able to infect.
Supercell Ltd is a Finnish mobile game development company based in Helsinki. Founded on 14 May 2010, the company's debut game was the browser game Gunshine.net, and after its release in 2011, Supercell started developing games for mobile devices. Since then, the company has fully released five mobile games: Hay Day, Clash of Clans, Boom Beach, Clash Royale, and Brawl Stars, which are freemium fast-paced games and have been very successful for the company, the first two generating revenue of €2 million a day in 2013.
Cheetah Mobile Inc (猎豹移动公司) is a Chinese mobile internet company headquartered in Beijing. As of January 2017, it has more than 634 million monthly active users.
PlayCanvas is an open-source 3D game engine/interactive 3D application engine alongside a proprietary cloud-hosted creation platform that allows for simultaneous editing from multiple computers via a browser-based interface. It runs in modern browsers that support WebGL, including Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. The engine is capable of rigid-body physics simulation, handling three-dimensional audio and 3D animations.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been covered in several video games, mainly developed by independent studios or individual lone wolf developers. Games have been made in various genres, often tasking the player to take control of the Prime Minister of Israel. Some can be categorized as serious games, others as newsgames or educational games.
Fragger is a popular trajectory-based puzzle game created and developed by Harold Brenes and released in 2009 for the Internet. After achieving popularity on the Internet, being played more than 100 million times, it was licensed and ported by Miniclip to iPhone in 2010, and to Android and PlayJam in 2012. By August 2014 it had become the second-placed paid app for iPhone and third overall top-grossing app in Apple's App Store. The gameplay is similar to Angry Birds. The game has had "generally favourable reviews", garnering a Metacritic score of 86% based on 5 critic reviews.
Microsoft Solitaire Collection is a video game developed by Microsoft Casual Games and published by Xbox Game Studios for Microsoft Windows. It combines the Solitaire, FreeCell and Spider Solitaire titles that were included with previous versions of Windows. It also introduces Pyramid and TriPeaks to Windows for the first time, as well as new daily challenges and themes. Unlike the games included in Windows 7 and earlier versions, Microsoft Solitaire Collection is freemium adware with Xbox Live integration.
Slither.io is a multiplayer online video game available for iOS, Android, and web browsers, developed by Steve Howse. Players control an avatar resembling a snake, which consumes multi-colored pellets, both from other players and ones that naturally spawn on the map in the game, to grow in size. The objective of the game is to grow the longest snake in the server. Slither.io is similar in concept to the popular 2015 web game Agar.io and is reminiscent of the classic arcade game Snake.
Surviv.io was a browser-based multiplayer online 2D battle royale game created by Justin Kim and Nick Clark. It was released in October 2017 on its website for desktop browsers, and in October and November 2018 respectively for iOS and Android devices. Similar to other titles in the battle royale genre, players battled against other players on a large map from a top-down perspective, scavenging for supplies and weapons. The game also supported two or four player team modes, and could be played on mobile browsers as well.
Hole.io is a 2018 arcade physics puzzle game with battle royale mechanics created by French studio Voodoo for Android and iOS.
Diep.io is a multiplayer browser game created by Brazilian developer Matheus Valadares in 2016. It is also the inspiration for Arras.io. Miniclip first published the mobile version. In Diep.io, players control tanks in a two-dimensional arena. They earn experience points and upgrades by destroying shapes and other tanks.
Jaws.io is an action video game based on the 1975 American horror film Jaws. It was developed by Puerto Rican company SRG Studios and published by Universal Studios Interactive Entertainment LLC for iOS and Android devices, and was released on February 14, 2019. The game's servers were shut down on October 31 the same year and is no longer available for download.
GDevelop is a 2D and 3D cross-platform, free and open-source game engine, which mainly focuses on creating PC and mobile games, as well as HTML5 games playable in the browser. Created by Florian Rival, a software engineer at Google, GDevelop is mainly aimed at non-programmers and game developers of all skillsets, employing event based visual programming similar to engines like Construct, Stencyl, and Tynker.
The popularisation of mobile games began as early as 1997 with the introduction of Snake preloaded on Nokia feature phones, demonstrating the practicality of games on these devices. Several mobile device manufacturers included preloaded games in the wake of Snake's success. In 1999, the introduction of the i-mode service in Japan allowed a wide variety of more advanced mobile games to be downloaded onto smartphones, though the service was largely limited to Japan. By the early 2000s, the technical specifications of Western handsets had also matured to the point where downloadable applications could be supported, but mainstream adoption continued to be hampered by market fragmentation between different devices, operating environments, and distributors.