A special category of games has emerged in recent years, called .io games. This is a genre that owes its name to a quirk of the way the modern internet works.The letters âioâ have special significance in the world of digital entertainment. In electronics circles, they stand for âinput outputâ. Arduino and Raspberry Pi users might think of the row of sockets that come attached to the top of the board: the General Purposes Input Output (GPIO) header. In gaming, we need inputs and outputs. An input can be a keyboard, mouse or control pad. An output might include a screen and some speakers. If youâre gaming on a handheld device, then all of these features are housed inside the same unit, and all of the io goodness goes on internally â but the principles remain the same: on either side of process, you need inputs and outputs.Coincidentally, thereâs also a Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) for âioâ. These are the collections of letters you get at the end of a website â for example, Japanese websites end in .jp; UK websites end in .uk; German websites end in .de. The letters âioâ signify that a site is hosted in the British Indian Ocean territory. Most of the websites which use this domain, however, donât have anything to do with this part of the world; they just wanted to get .io into their urls because of the technical association it has with gaming. A similar thing happened with .tv, the ccTLD for the Polynesian island of Tuvalu (10% of whose government revenue comes from royalties from addresses).Here on Gamepix, youâll find a range of .io games, all unlocked and ready to play in browser-friendly HTML5. Youâll be able to enjoy them on just about any device you can think of!
Things you always find in io games
So that explains where the name came from. But what exactly do io games have in common? At first, it might not seem obvious â but once youâve played a few, youâll get the idea. Players start off as a small character in a large playing area. By consuming the items around them, youâll grow bigger. Eventually, players run into one another, and thereâs a risk that one will destroy the other. Exactly how combat works varies from game to game. Sometimes, the larger player will automatically destroy the smaller player on contact (and grow a bit larger in the process), but crafty smaller players can usually outmanoeuvre a larger one. Resource gathering mechanics are sometimes built into io games, too, along with power-ups through which one player might dash away from, or toward, another. In almost every one of these games, a single false move can cause the player to die permanently, forcing them to start again from scratch. If youâve spent half-an-hour gobbling up other players and protecting your own existence, this can be a big deal! This creates an element of tension which is perfectly reminiscent of the natural wilderness that many of these games try to emulate. Youâll need to be constantly wary of other smaller players looking to wander across the path of your snake, or to gang up on your overgrown amoeba, and youâll need to be constantly looking to expand â because the alternative is death! Until youâre the biggest fish in the sea, thereâs always a risk that another player will get the jump over you. And even if you are, being eaten is an occupational hazard. After all, when youâre at the top of the game, the only way is down! Itâs hard to pinpoint what makes games like this so fun. Perhaps itâs the joy of the feeling that youâre growing and developing while playing the game; maybe itâs the feeling of domination that comes when you take out a smaller, weaker player; or it could be the tension that comes with investing time and energy into growing, and then knowing that itâs all on the line later on! Whatever the reason, all we know is that theyâre great fun!
GamePixâs Collection of io Games
While the io formula is derived from just a few games, the principles have proven so popular that thereâs now an io game for just about everyone, and they all offer their own individual quirks. In Mope.io, players control stylised animals who roam around a colourful forest floor in search of things to eat. The standard .io rules apply here: survive when youâre small, but show no mercy when youâre big! Other popular variants draw upon one of the earliest io games, Slither.io. Just like in the original, Wormax, Conquer and Wormate put the player in control of a long worm-like creature. Slither across the playing surface, eat as much food as possible, take out other players, and eat the masses of food their corpses disintegrate into. Little Big Snake takes things in a slightly different direction, with a succession of levels available for your snake to explore. Not all io games are based on traditional predation. In Hole.io, the playable character is a giant black hole in the middle of a city. Devour as many buildings, vehicles and people as you can by flying into them, and be the biggest player at the end. Similarly, there are .io games that borrow from the popular battle royale format. In Build Royale and Foes.io, players must assemble items and their presence on the map rather than simply eating food and growing. In much the same way, Moomoo.io requires that players build up a village and balance four different resources in order to expand. Fly or Die, on the other hand, is a more traditional, with players taking the role of an animal. The difference in this case is that players donât just grow into a bigger version of the same animal; they actually âevolveâ PokÊmon-like, into entirely different animals. Start off as a fly, then grow into a butterfly, and then a bird. Itâs a system that might cause science teachers to roll their eyes and sigh, but itâs one that adds up to reliable fun!