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With apologies to Kojima, the original Snake was pretty solid. A killer app before smartphones were even a thing, the game transformed blocky Nokia handsets into persuasive handheld gaming devices. Now there's a free globalised upgrade for desktop, iOS and Android that smooths off some of Snake's traditional right-angle corners and sticks a pair of Cookie Monster googly eyes on it. In Slither.io, you are still tasked with chugging around the screen eating blobs to grow your snake from slim adder to bonzer anaconda. It's just that there are four or five hundred other players trying to do the same thing.It's Snake reimagined on a massive, multiplayer scale, a squidgier, more populous cousin to Tron's vivid lightcycle deathmatches. Danger is all around as you curve round the arena. Your expanding body is both your weapon and your shield, allowing you to loiter in your own coils if things get crowded. If your head comes into contact with another snake, you perish, leaving behind a ghostly imprint of nourishing blobs for your foes to feast on. It's recycling in action: to the victor, the coils!
Since launching in March, Slither.io has grown to be one of the casual gaming success stories of 2016. Your work colleagues are playing it. Your nephew is playing it. Judging by social media updates, it can sometimes feel like everybody is playing it. Partly, that's because the barrier to entry is extraordinarily low. Pick a nickname, click play and you're off, using mouse or arrow keys to plot a course round the play area as your snake trundles endlessly forward.
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