How to play Squirm.io

Squirm.io controls on desktop

You can steer with the mouse or the keyboard, and swap between them mid-game — whichever you used last is the one in charge. There is no accelerate and no brake, only steering: the worm turns toward where you point it, as fast as its size allows.

• Mouse: the worm follows your cursor.
• Left and right arrows, or A and D: turn. Hold to keep turning, let go to hold your new heading. They steer the worm rather than pointing it at a compass direction, so you can never accidentally ask for a U-turn.
• Boost: hold the left mouse button, Space, Shift, or the up arrow / W.
• Fullscreen: the Fullscreen button below the minimap.

Mouse gives finer aim, which matters for tight cuts. The keys are easier to hold a steady curve with, which is what you want when circling someone. Neither is faster — turn rate is set by your size, not by your input.

Squirm.io controls on mobile

On a phone or tablet you get a joystick in the bottom-left and a boost button in the bottom-right. Anywhere on the left half of the screen starts the joystick, so your thumb does not have to hunt for a small target while the arena is moving. A small nudge does nothing on purpose — the worm keeps its heading until you push past the deadzone.

How to boost (and what it costs)

Boosting takes you from 200 to 380 units a second and burns 4 length every second. You need a length of at least 15 to boost at all, and there is no cooldown — you can hold it as long as you can afford it.

The length you burn is not destroyed. It drops behind you as pellets carrying exactly what you burned, and anyone can eat them. This is why boosting away from a chase is usually a mistake: you are feeding the worm behind you while getting shorter yourself. Boost toward something — a cut, a death cloud, an escape route you can actually reach.

How worms die in Squirm.io

There are exactly three ways to die, and only three:

• Your head touches another worm's body. You die, they do not. Size is irrelevant.
• Two heads meet. Both worms die. There is no size tiebreak, so a length-10 worm can trade itself for a length-50,000 one.
• You touch the red boundary. The arena edge kills on contact; it does not bounce you back.

Your own body is not a hazard. You can coil through yourself as tightly as you like, which is what makes the coiling trap on the tips page possible.

How to grow your worm longer

Ordinary pellets are worth 6 length each. The pellets dropped when a worm dies are worth between 18 and 120 depending on how big that worm was, and they arrive in a cloud. One good death cloud is worth minutes of grazing, so when something dies nearby, go.

Pellets are pulled toward your head once they are within about 70 units, so you do not have to drive over them precisely. Skim past a line of them rather than stopping.

Common beginner mistakes

• Chasing from behind. You cannot kill a worm by touching its tail. Only its head hitting your body kills it.
• Boosting to escape. You get shorter and drop food for your pursuer. Turn instead — you almost always out-turn a bigger worm.
• Playing near the edge. The boundary kills, and a bigger worm can pin you against it.
• Going head-on with a small worm. Both of you die. Being bigger does not save you.
• Turning too late when big. Turn rate falls as you grow, so start your turns earlier than feels necessary.