io games list: every type of io game, explained

What counts as an io game

An io game is a free browser multiplayer game you can join instantly with no download and usually no account. The name comes from the .io domain that early games such as agar.io used; it now describes the format rather than the address.

Snake and worm io games

You grow by eating and you die the moment your head touches another player's body. Nothing else in the genre is this easy to explain or this hard to put down. The skill is spatial — reading where a line will be in two seconds, not where it is now. Runs last three to ten minutes and every one of them ends in a mistake you can name.

• slither.io

  Worm

  The original and still the biggest. Everything here is measured against it.

• Squirm.io our game

  Worm

  Constant speed at every size; turn rate is the only cost of growing.

• snake.io

  Snake

  Several modes and the best mobile build in the category.

• wormate.io

  Worm

  Sweets instead of pellets, plus power-ups the purists dislike and everyone else enjoys.

• Little Big Snake

  Worm

  The genre with RPG scaffolding on top — missions, upgrades, pets, seasons.

• powerline.io

  Snake

  Stripped-back neon, very twitchy, no decoration at all.

Eating and growing io games

Absorb anything smaller than you and run from anything bigger. The oldest io format there is, and the one where being large is genuinely a disadvantage: mass makes you slow, and slow makes you somebody else's meal. Expect to spend as long hiding as hunting.

• agar.io

  Cells

  The 2015 game that created the genre. Split to chase, merge to survive.

• mope.io

  Animals

  A food-chain twist: evolve up through animal tiers, each with its own trick.

Shooter io games

Aim and fire in a browser tab, with no install and no launcher. Top-down for the tactical ones, first-person for the twitchy ones. This is where io games compete directly with games you would otherwise pay for, and a few of them genuinely hold up.

• krunker.io

  FPS

  The best-performing browser shooter, and the one with a real competitive scene.

• diep.io

  Tanks

  Top-down tanks with upgrade trees deep enough to argue about.

• shellshock.io

  FPS

  Eggs with guns. As silly and as competent as that sounds.

• venge.io

  FPS

  Faster and more arcade than Krunker, leaning on abilities rather than pure aim.

• 1v1.LOL

  Build and shoot

  Building and shooting, in duels. The one everyone finds on a school laptop.

Battle royale io games

The shrinking-circle format cut down to something that loads in a tab and finishes in ten minutes rather than thirty. You lose almost every round, which is the point — the shape of the format is what makes surviving to the last twenty feel earned.

• Survev.io

  Battle royale

  The community continuation of surviv.io, and the best top-down BR in a browser.

• ZombsRoyale.io

  Battle royale

  Big lobbies, quick rounds, and a steady stream of limited-time modes.

Territory io games

Claim ground by drawing a loop and closing it, while everyone else tries to cut your trail before you get back. The tension is entirely self-inflicted: every extra metre you take is another second exposed, and it is greed that kills you, not skill.

• paper.io 2

  Territory

  The definitive version of the idea, and the most polished.

• splix.io

  Territory

  The blockier original that paper.io refined.

• Territorial.io

  Strategy

  Slower and stranger — map-painting strategy with hundreds of players at once.

Building and survival io games

Gather, craft, build, defend. Sessions run far longer than the rest of the genre — half an hour rather than five minutes — and losing hurts proportionally more, because what you lose is a base rather than a run.

• moomoo.io

  Survival

  Resource gathering and base defence, with a clan layer over the top.

• starve.io

  Survival

  Cold, hunger and other players, in that order of danger.

• Bloxd.io

  Sandbox

  A block sandbox with rotating minigames. One of few recent arrivals with staying power.

• Voxiom.io

  Voxel FPS

  Voxel shooting and building. Ambitious for something with no install step.

Drawing and party io games

The ones you open with other people rather than instead of them. A low skill ceiling on purpose — they are built for a group call, and they are the only io games that are clearly better with friends than with strangers.

• skribbl.io

  Drawing

  Draw and guess. The one that reliably survives contact with a group chat.

• Bonk.io

  Physics

  Physics sumo. Absurd, and the custom maps go very deep indeed.

• Smash Karts

  Kart combat

  Kart racing crossed with deathmatch. Short rounds, instantly readable.