When it comes to gaming, people have an infatuation with high-end gaming PCs and the latest gaming consoles, but they often overlook the sheer entertainment and excitement that simple .IO games can provide. Being simple web-based applications, these games are easy to access and often have a very simple format that even young children can play. These games don’t require complex strategy or high-end equipment, they are usually short games that entice users to play over and over again. If you want a quick few minutes of entertainment while you are at work, school just bored during the day, these are some of the best .IO games you need to try out.
Brutal.io
This game is similar to a lot of IO titles in which you have to move around the map to find food and you grow in size as you eat more food. The difference in this is that your player is equipped with a destructive ball that you can hurl at other players to kill them and win points. You only have the ability to spin the ball and planning your attacks is key to success in this game. Once the ball is launched you can cause it to return to the player like a boomerang by holding down the mouse button. If you missed the player you were aiming at with your initial throw, you might be able to hit them with the ball on its return path.
Gartic.io
Gartic.io is a very interesting title in the IO line-up and has very different gameplay than other games. Rather than killing to win, in this game, one person has the ability to draw on a whiteboard that everyone can see, and everyone watching has to guess the word that the drawing is based on. It’s a bit like a white-board version of charades. Be wary of playing .IO games online because many users have reported problems with game extensions and plugins as they pose a serious security threat. When playing online games, make sure you stick to the browser version and you are accessing it through a secure site. While compromised plugins are usually used for marketing and gathering user behavior stats, if someone is falling so low as to hide their intentions under software, you can never be sure of their intent.
Krunker.IO
This is definitely one of the most unique titles in the entire IO category as it is one of the few titles that feature 3D images and is actually a web-based first-person shooter game. You have the option to choose from a variety of weapons and then go out into the field to massacre the multiplayer army. FPS games can be extremely competitive and hacks and cracks are common. If you want to know about how you can tweak your experience in Krunker.IO, you can read this guide which will cover everything from the basics to the advanced stages of modifying an HTML 5 hosted game. Of course, Krunker.IO is also available on other platforms, though the web-based version is quite popular.
Slither.IO
Arguably one of the most popular IO games ever created. Slither.IO is reminiscent of the classic snake game found on Nokia mobile phones nearly two decades ago. However, even with this simple game format where your aim is to guide your snake across the landscape eating food and avoiding obstacles, this simple game has more than 60 million daily users. The app version of this game available on both iOS and Android devices is among the top ten most downloaded apps next to behemoth names such as Youtube and Facebook. More importantly, this is a relatively new game and has only been around since 2016. Today, the app is not only doing great, there are several similar spin-offs that have used the same concept and created a very similar game in terms of gameplay.
Hole.IO
This is an interesting take on the traditional “eat” or “be eaten” strategy in IO games, but the twist is that in this game, you play the role of a black hole. Having the role of a black hole, you can eat all kinds of objects in the city but you have to be conscious to not eat something larger than you swallow and of course, you can be eaten by other larger holes as well.
Overall, the IO game industry has grown exponentially with single titles making millions of dollars a month. Moreover, the fact that the internet is so widely available now means that people in all parts of the world are taking to these games for quick entertainment. They don’t consume a lot of processing power or data, which makes them perfect for both web and mobile use.