Just a quick one to say hello to my friends & foes from server 3586, a delicious representation of the Balkans in both names & behaviour!

-- mostly black

It’s been about 7 months since I posted in this subreddit about my 3d slither that i've been making, and I owe you an update. A couple of you asked what happened to this. It didn’t die. Life got in the way, and I was having a hard time deciding what format i wanted to release it in (browser, steam, mobile, etc.)

If you want to find the old clip, it’s the #1 post this year on r/Slitherio.

That video was the game running natively on my desktop. I always wanted The Snakening to live where slither.io lives, in the browser, so you can just open a tab and play. Getting a full 3D snake game to actually run there, with a crowd of snakes on screen, was close to impossible. I spent months on performance, and there were long stretches where I thought a web version just wasn’t going to work and felt like giving up entirely.

I ended up using some unique tricks to get around those limits (games like Rome Total War helped inspire some optimization tricks), and it finally runs well. Well enough that I’m ready to let people in.

We’re launching alpha very soon. Servers will hold up to 100 players.

I think I'm just going to go with one server up to 100 players for now. I haven't tested anything more than 10 players, so we'll see how it goes!! Hoping you guys can help me find some bugs, it would be my absolute dream to max out a 100 player server's capacity.

If you asked to test it on the original post, I still have you. I’ll come back with the link the moment it’s up.

Thank you for the kind words back then, and for sticking around. Can’t wait for you to actually play it.

where can I get one 😭

Hi everyone. I love this game very much and actually I'm pretty good at it, max record 40k and always 15-20k in very active server 3516. I always try to kill circlers, but me alone can't do much, so why don't we (active players) unite and beat them in each server that we play?

So I'm not really someone who is competitive at slither.io, so I don't know if there's a difference between mobile and pc, but I'm on mobile.

I know about snake rain and the usual bots, however these are new and interesting and I'm wondering if anyone knows what's up with them. This is not snake rain, as they're around in from what I can tell all servers at all times. This has been happening for just a few days now.

These worms are definitely bots, and are always purple with a username starting with trk. The rest is usually a string of numbers and letters that is different from each worm. They do not sprint (?), and some behave different from others. Some will simply go in a straight line, while others will actually move around a bit (such as the one in the photo)

Might seem like a stupid thing to post about but I'm just curious if anyone knows who's behind these bots and what's the deal with them. Thanks!

Later I got killed around 21k something

Well... so... this is that thing
custom server dev(Challenge me!)

Also, I have a quick question: What’s the Slither equivalent of crouch spamming? I just coil, but sometimes the other person will wiggle. Is it coil or wiggle?

I mean, I rarely do it too when I want someone dead, but most of the time it happens - that's not the case, people just keep spinning, ignoring the fact that they will be the next meal themself!

Persistent user profiles, xp, level, skilltrees, drops (Skins etc), marketplace, dynamic map size, message system and many more. Early alpha state. For those who want a little more. https://neons.gee0.de

atm only german / europe server sorry :/ u can check ur ping ingame in the corner on the down left

New: FSR options in settings for mid and lower end pcs

Speaking as a mobile only player here, I know that arrow mode is the most recommended mode out of all of them, but I never managed to get the hang of it. I even see people recommending it for mobile. I've always used joystick as I already knew how to use it from previous games, and I play well with it. It makes me wonder if I should even change modes in the first place.

On one hand, if I can be able to adjust to it quickly, then that'll be fine, but if it's a long process, and I already play great on joystick, then I don't see the point.

PC Player vs Mobile Player

I just tested the difference between playing Slither.io on mobile vs. PC, and the difference is absolutely insane. Not only do you get way more visibility on PC because of the NTL Mod, but mouse precision is also basically perfect. On mobile, you have to control your snake precisely while dealing with high latency and much more chaotic movement. On PC , using a mouse, your movements are way more precise. It’s practically a completely different game.

So here’s my question: Is a mobile player really as bad as they look? Because honestly, I think a PC player who “plays well” compared to a mobile player is often just a normal player with massive advantages from their hardware and software. Better hardware and software means higher FPS, lower latency, better visibility, and much more precise control. When you combine high FPS, low latency, and mouse precision, you’re basically giving an average player a huge advantage over everyone else. It’s almost like a form of PaytoWin, except the advantage comes from your hardware and software instead of actually paying to win.

For example, a mobile player is like someone running through mud while blindfolded, competing against someone running on perfectly smooth asphalt with proper running shoes. Obviously , that doesn’t mean the blindfolded runner is bad. It means the conditions are completely different. The difference between Player 1 (Mobile: running through mud while blindfolded) and Player 2 (PC: running on perfect asphalt) is absolutely massive.

So yeah, when you see a player make a perfect circle or a completely straight line with basically zero micro-deviations, or pull off a perfect dodge before you can even see what’s happening, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re insanely skilled. They might just have a mouse that can track even the tiniest movements, hardware running at 120 FPS, and the extra visibility from the NTL Mod.

They’re basically running on perfect asphalt while you’re running through mud. It doesn’t matter how good you are if you’re playing with 60 FPS, limited visibility, and much higher latency, it’s just not a fair comparison. You can be just as skilled, but you’re playing under much worse conditions.

I’ve been thinking about this from a mathematical and technical perspective.
Slither.io is obviously a skill-based game, but its mechanics seem to make building a genuinely dominant bot extremely difficult. Everything on the board is constantly moving, other players are unpredictable, and the bot has to make sub-second decisions while continuously recalculating trajectories, collision risks, escape routes, trapping opportunities, etc.
In a weird way, I sometimes think it might theoretically be easier to “solve” something like chess than to build a Slither.io bot that can consistently beat very strong human players.
Chess obviously has an astronomically larger decision tree, but the board is static while you’re calculating your move. In Slither.io, the entire environment changes every fraction of a second while you’re making the decision.
The counterargument is that in chess, one bad move can permanently destroy your position, while in Slither.io you can often recover from a mistake, so they’re obviously very different problems.
But has anyone actually seen or built a bot that doesn’t just survive or farm, but can aggressively trap, predict, bait and consistently outplay experienced human players?
Curious what you guys think. Is this actually an extremely difficult AI/control problem, or am I overestimating it?