Slither.io is a dangerously addictive game imbued with surprising wisdom.
Easy to learn. Difficult to master. Snake combat multiplayer goodness all within the convenience of your friendly web browser. It’s no wonder its popularity exploded upon its release.
After having logged more hours playing the game than I care to admit (my high score is 65k), I was surprised to have gained meaningful insights that also ring true in my daily life. Who says video games are just a form of escape?
The goal of the game is to grow your snake avatar as long as you can. The way to do this is by eating glowing orbs known as mass. The more mass you eat, the longer you grow. Mass is sprinkled throughout the game, but only in small quantities. The real way to grow is to take down another player by getting him to run into your body, thus killing him. The dead snake then explodes into a glowing cloud of orbs you can then eat to grow longer, which enables you to do more of the same. That is the game in a nutshell. Simple and fun.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
Do or do not, there is no try
If you are going to take another player down, you must fully commit. Otherwise if I hesitate, it gives the other snake time to defend and even attack, which can leave me missing out on the opportunity or at worst getting cut off and biting the dust myself. Bottom line, either fully commit and attack or move on and look for a different opportunity.
Progress is not linear
There are small glowing orbs peppering the game environment that any player can eat freely. But this is the equivalent of starvation rations, you won’t get full by eating droppings. Instead of grazing on the free stuff, I’ve learned that if I go super aggressive and target larger snakes, even if I die 9 out of 10 times, that 10th time I will succeed and grow extremely quickly by eating their orbs. The take away: life does not progress linearly, unless we live it that way. There are opportunities for exponential growth if we are willing to discover and pursue them, with failure and risk as necessary teachers.
Greed kills
Taking down a another player in Slither.io unleashes a trail of shimmering mass to consume. It is dazzling to look at and tempting to try and eat it all. But similar to the wild where a fresh kill attracts the attention of many, so does a newly liberated blob of glowing mass in Slither.io. Inevitably, other players will start swarming around the glowing mass trying to eat their fill. Take too much and you run the risk of getting cut off, dying and adding to the glowing mass party. Take too little and you don’t grow. I follow a method of opportunistic, cautious greed. Eat a bit here, eat a bit there. Exercise patience. Someone will always rush in. And often they themselves will get cut off and add to the orb cloud. Greed kills. Pigs get slaughtered. Don’t become part of the glowing orb cloud!
David(s) can take down Goliath
It is possible for a much smaller player to take down a giant one. When this happens, it creates an opportunity to exponentially grow your length in minutes. One successful tactic in taking down larger snakes is to use the bodies of other snakes to create multiple opportunities for the larger snake to make a mistake and run into a smaller player. The lesson here is that though the mighty incumbents may tower over us, a small group of players can take them down with a little coordinated action.
Adapt as you grow
In Slither.io, you must adapt as your snake’s length grows or die. When small, I dart around and through clouds of small snakes. I am nimble. Speedy. My life is disposable and I go for big, risky opportunities and often die. When I’m big it’s different. I am bulky. My turn radius is wider. I am a target for all snakes on the board. I have more at stake. I am focused on nurturing this turn instead of risking everything constantly. I become both hunter and hunted simultaneously. It is a position of strength and vulnerability. It’s hard to stay on top! I adjust my play style by traveling on the outskirts and hunting larger snakes. Or I encircle a swarm of smaller snakes. I’m looking for big payouts only, which generally means hunting the top 10 snakes on the leaderboard. The lesson: we must grow and adapt with our circumstances to succeed in different contexts.
There you have it. A few nuggets of insight (dare I say wisdom?) gleaned from playing a fantastically entertaining video game. Perhaps there’s a deeper lesson here in learning about life through focusing on anything be it video games or babies, but that’s another post entirely.
And now back to changing diapers...