The hit mobile game Paper.io took advantage of Splix.io's failure to create a compelling mobile version. And now Paper.io can boast 20 million downloads from its Apple App and Google Play App, that feels like a pretty big market that Splix.io missed out on.

Well, it seems that the Paper.io community's hunger goes well beyond the mobile app and now a private developer has cashed in on Voodoo's lacking desktop version.

Queue the desktop version. Yep, a private developer has cloned Paper.io. And it seems as though the community has either not noticed they are playing a clone, or they just don't care. With an audience of over 3 million monthly players this obvious clone is doing very well.

The game is pretty addictive so it is easy to see why both the mobile version and the desktop clone are commanding large audiences. But for those that have not played either game, or the game that started it all -- Splix.io, here is a quick breakdown of what all the fuss is about.

What is Paper.io?

You play as a small piece of paper roaming around and world littered with other players. You can freely move around leaving a trail behind you. Once you circle around and connect to the solid color at your starting point, all the land you have encircled is then claimed by you. Of course, there is more to it and a few nice game mechanics to really keep players interested. 

When another player is growing their area, you can ram their trail, thus killing them and their claimed land. This frees up that land to be claimed and grants you points for killing that player. They can return the favour and kill you in the same way, once they respawn and find you.

via GIPHY

Players can also claim areas that have been claimed by another player.

The game has a massive following and now you can play it on your mobile and also on desktop -- albeit through a cloned version.

Your Thoughts

As a clone of a very popular mobile app, do you think this new desktop version is as good as the mobile app?

Should Voodoo have made their own desktop version? Let us know in the comments below!

You know what's a pretty great .io game on browser? Splix.io, that's what. You know what's a mediocre .io game on mobile? Also Splix.io. Which is one of the bigger reasons its lesser clone Paper.io has come to be so popular.

The basic premise behind both Splix.io and Paper.io is pretty simple: You start with a color square and have to branch out, surround blank squares or other peoples' territory, and return to your color to take over more territory for yourself. If someone cuts into your ribbon, you're dead. As simple as that.

Splix.io found its way on the internet sometime last year and was an original game... and here comes developer Voodoo with Paper.io a few months later, claiming the game is "a new and fun experience inspired by io type games" when in fact it is a direct copy of Jester the End's Splix. Way to be original, guys.

So original.

Now, no one is saying Splix looks better than Paper. Truth is, much of Paper.io's growing popularity on mobile is because it looks better. It's bright and, well... looks like paper. That's great and all, but did you know you are not playing against real people?

Yessiree, the other "players" in Paper.io are all bots. Sure is great not being able to compete against other people's territory advancement strategies. Also loads of fun ads are thrown at you with no warning after you die, and you will be dealing with a ton of lag for no reason. It's not even an online game, there is no excuse for the lag.

This all sounds terrible but it's honestly a better alternative to the Splix.io app, which is not only more laggy than Paper but it has a plethora of server issues that not only lag in-game but make it so some players can't connect at all.

Your best bet for this type of game is to play Splix.io on your computer's browser, but on the go you really can't win. If Jasper the End would put more effort into the mobile version it would knock Paper.io out of the park, but as it stands his (original) game has floundered on mobile devices and that's not about to change. There is no worthwhile way to play this game on mobile, except by playing Paper. Shame.

Overtaking the world is sheer fun. The idea of assembling an army, training troops, and defending a nation has been played out in countless war games. In fact, there are simply too many variations of isometric RTS titles to mention. Today, we’re looking at a Command & Conquer of sorts, and it’s called Splix.io.

Freely available on Poki, Splix.io is an intensely competitive version of Snake. Instead of gathering apples, your snake is tasked with chomping on territory. The premise is that one snake can rule the entire world. All you have to do is encircle parts of the grid, and they will become yours. This action is known as capturing blocks, and it’s the only way to win.

Truthfully, there is actually no “winner” in Splix.io. Instead, the best player is awarded with the top spot on the leaderboard. During each game, the Top 10 are listed in the upper-right section of the screen. The in-game leaderboard updates every few seconds, always showing who’s the best. After an intense bout of capturing land, you can view the rest of the daily leaderboards. These include long lists of the top players in the following categories: Blocks Captured, Time in First Place, Trail Length, Time Alive, and Total Kills. So, even if you’re not keen enough to reach the top spot in your current game, you could earn a position on one of the other daily leaderboards.

The gameplay in Splix.io is perhaps best described as “steady.” The speed of each game is unquestionably consistent. There is no way to move faster or slower, and the game doesn’t lag due to high traffic. The graphics are colorful but basic, allowing you to see nearby enemies without being distracted by shadows or textures. These are all welcome aspects, affecting gameplay in a positive way. Conversely, extended playtime doesn’t feel as exciting as it may in other games. For instance, the neon graphics and dangerous speed boosts in peer Slither.io keep things very interesting.

Speaking of Slither.io, that can be played on Poki.com; its title screen is nearly identical to the one in Splix.io. The latter obviously copied its predecessor, opting for a simple and effective welcome page. In Splix.io, you are asked for a username before joining a game. If you don’t enter one, you don’t get one. This seems to be a slight oversight by the developers—why not generate a random username, like practically every other game? That way, when scoring on the leaderboard, you won’t show up as a blank space.

The title screen also includes a couple of blinking text fields, which teach you how to play, and provide stats regarding the most recent game. Again, this is nearly the same as Slither.io, and there’s nothing wrong with that. After playing, it’s nice to see how you performed and learn who bested you.

Overall, Splix.io is a solid multiplayer game. It doesn’t have any special features, which is part of the reason it plays so well. If you want competitive, fun multiplayer action without any flash, join the other snakes in Splix.io.

Splix.io has quickly become one of my favorite .io games and that seems to be the case for a lot of my friends as well. The game has a while to go to reach the level of popularity of some other .io games but it's racking up player numbers like it's nobody's business.

If you're new to the game you're already well-behind thousands of others in terms of skill and experience. The first little learning curve lies in how to actually play Splix.io, which a lot of players I come across in-game seem to have trouble figuring out past just moving around and converting grey blocks to their color.

This guide is a step above how to play the game and instead is going to focus on various tips to make your time with Splix.io not only more fun overall but to help you last longer to take and hold a place on the leaderboard. As with any other PvP game there are strategic intricacies you can learn and master to get further than the average player with ease. Knowledge is power!

[Before the big tips] A touch on expansion

In this guide we're going to refer to your colored area as your "territory" because it is distinctly yours just as other players' areas are distinctly theirs. Taking a more territorial mindset when going into Splix.io sets you up to want to expand, protect, and destroy. That's exactly what you need to do.

Your primary task is expanding your territory, which is easy enough to do in small portions but takes some strategic thought to do successfully over a period of time longer than one to three minutes. You want to expand, you need to expand, and you want to stay alive while doing it.

New players tend to take one of two strategies when expanding:

1. Go too far out from their territory, exposing their tail to other players and dying
2. Taking tiny pieces of territory at a time, making it take entirely too long to rack score up and get a scope of the area around them

These are two things you want to do occasionally but you definitely do not want to do either of them all the time, otherwise you're either going to be dying all the time (in case of point 1) or will make such tiny incremental progress you'll never get on the leaderboard (in case of point 2).

The big question for you here is: "So how am I supposed to expand, then?"

Tip 1. Be obsessively aware of your surroundings

In a game where even a slight misstep can lead to your demise, you need some keen awareness to stick it out for the long haul.

By awareness I mean keeping tabs on where other players' territories (and the players themselves) are located in relation to you and your own. Ask yourself the follow questions before you expand:

• Is another player's territory only a few to 15 ~ 20 blocks away from your own?
• Do you see a couple of players a bit away from you trying to take one another out in a close-range territorial dispute?
• Can you see territory near yours on the map, but it's not within your vision yet?

You have to ask yourself the above questions, albeit very quickly, each time you expand. It's imperative you know what's going on around you to expand safely.

Note about the minimap:

The map does not update every second. Instead it takes a few seconds to update.

You should keep this in mind as you'll notice that, when you take out another player who held a large chunk of territory, it takes a few seconds for that territory to disappear on the minimap.

Tip 2. Threat mitigation and overextending

This should be a fairly obvious follow up to the first tip, but just to make it totally clear: The players surrounding you are going to dictate how you expand.

You should not expand toward other players unless you either:

1. Have no choice
2. Are confident you can either out-dance (dancing will be talked about in another tip) or out-smart them to cut their tail and remove them as a threat

A big part of doing well in Splix.io boils down to threat mitigation, which basically just means removing other players before you slip up and let them at your tail. Another big part is not being hasty and ramming yourself at someone 20 blocks away.

Overextending is the number one way new players get themselves killed over and over again, and it's probably the number one way even experienced players get themselves killed. It's just all too easy to get greedy, overextend, and be killed.

Overextending in this sense means straying too far from your territory, and in Splix.io that means having your tail out and about for players you can't even see to kill you. For instance, you never want to be the pink player in the image below.

Spoilers: Pink died.

Your best expansion strategy involves going far out from your territory very rarely. I highly recommend you only stray out far from your territory when specifically trying to kill another player, especially if they themselves are overextended. In these instances you go out, kill them, and immediately turn around and go back to your territory to keep your tail safe.

As a last note on this, you're going to see a ton of players super overextended, probably because they are new. Always kill other overextended players when they get near you to both punish them for bad play and to secure your territory.

Tip 3. Oddly-shaped territory is better than perfect squares and rectangles

If you find yourself always making perfectly shaped squares and rectangles as you expand, you may want to consider this tip a wake up call.

The grid-like movement and territory claiming in Splix.io seems to direct you to keeping your territory neat and orderly, but the fact is you need a more proactive playstyle to excel. And if you're sitting there just making your square area bigger bit by bit, you're not excelling. You're just waiting for someone to come by and mess with you.

Tying in with tip 1 (being aware of your surroundings) and tip 2 (threat mitigation and overextending) is tip 3's heart and soul: pay attention to players around you, expand toward them, and kill them before they have the chance.

This sounds a bit different from "oddly-shaped territory is better than perfect" but it fits right in. As stated before, if you're just focusing on making your territory bigger bit by bit you're not doing it right.

Most players don't expect you to start spreading your color directly toward them, much less expect you to be aggressive once you get there.

The ideal expansion method

Here are some image examples to more easily show what I mean by expanding in a more quick and dirty (but effective) way.

The image below is right after I started. Notice I made a rectangle to the upper left of the starting 10x10 territory the game gave me, then immediately make another rectangle on the opposite side.

In doing this I get to scout out my left and right while still being fairly safe.

From here I continue around the odd edges of my territory to fill in the blanks -- but I rarely do it perfectly to give myself growth goals as I go along and because my time is better spent looking around.

I see a pink player and territory below me and, as you can see, leisurely and safely expand towards them.

In these screenshots, notice I never stray all that far from my territory. I am doing three things in the above shots:

• Keeping my tail safe (I can easy return to my territory if another player comes by)
• Keeping an eye out for other players (to expand near them, avoid them, or to kill overextended players)
• Steadily expanding my territory

You don't want to do your expansion at a snail's pace and you don't want to get too excited and overextend either. Just make small to medium-size rectangular offshoots of your territory to scout out and expand efficiently and safely.

Tip 4. Doing the territory dance

Territorial disputes (fighting another player for territory) come in many forms, but the most common is "dancing".

Dancing in Splix.io can refer to going back and forth over a tiny safe section of your territory directly next to someone else's while they do the same, or weaving in and out of someone else's territory while they do the same to you.

In both of these instances you are both looking for the other player to make a mistake, and if you play it right you can be the one to come out on top.

You have two options when the time to dance starts:

1. Try to mirror the other player's actions or weave around in your territory looking for an opening where you can nab their tail without the same thing happening to you
2. Move away from where the other player is trying to encroach on your territory, let them get cocky, and take them out

The second option is not only far easier, it's worked for me far more than engaging other players in a territorial dance.

When you move away from other players and into your own territory (or even expand a little away where they can see) they assume you either don't know how to play or just forfeit that area. They rarely ever expect you to turn back toward them and take them out.

I've done this dozens of times. Here's one instance of this happening in my last game where I'm orange .

I backed away and let him take some territory (as you can see with the green blocks inside of my orange), then turned around and sniped his tail before he could react.

This method is not only extremely effective, it's insanely safe. You have no tail in your territory but other players certainly have one when they come into yours, so make use of that knowledge and this strategy to prolong your time and deal with threats.

These are some simple but length tips for you to succeed in Splix.io. The amount of players I see die because they're not thinking about what they should be doing next is absurd -- don't be one of these guys. Use your head (and your tail) and think about what you're doing, think about what you want to do, and figure out how to outsmart your enemies before they do the same to you.

Splix.io is all about spreading your territory and when you spend so much time staring at a color + pattern combination, it matters what choice you make. No one wants to stare at an ugly color or a pattern that doesn't suit their style, right?

The good thing about Splix.io even now in its infancy stage is that it already has a variety of block colors and patterns to choose from if you share the game on Facebook or Twitter. This only takes a few clicks to do and, if you don't want to share the game, you can click the Facebook or Twitter icon on the bottom left of the Splix.io site then exit the share window right after without actually sharing and still get the extra patterns and colors.

There are actually quite a few patterns and skins to choose from once you share the game. How many? A whopping 17 patterns paired with 12 colors -- that's no small amount!

There are no wrong choices in pattern and color, just choose what you like. Hopefully the developers will be adding more combinations down the road, as block patterns are arguably one of the more interesting "skin" options seen in .io games.

The available pattern images below all use the same darker blue color for a more even perception of the patterns. Below the patterns are all of the game's current colors.

Available patterns

Available colors

Note: The gray blocks shown here, when chosen in-game, will give you a random color when you start.

The great thing about Splix.io's customization is that there are two ways to customize instead of one, and it's rare you'll come across someone using the exact same pattern and combination you do. It may be similar in some ways to other .io games (with its front page looking very similar to Slither.io) but the customization options are a good example of how Splix.io stands out from the pack.

You may not have heard of Splix.io before today and that's understandable. After all there seem to be dozens of .io games floating around these days and it's not possible to keep track of all of them.

Splix.io is one of the few that have been steadily growing under the radar and it seems to be on the cusp of blowing up like the big three have. Every server I've been on has been sitting at around 100 people at a time and there are multiple servers. It's a good sign for this game's future popularity.

So here you are: You've loaded up Splix.io, watched the tiny tutorial under the name input on the site, and.. you die. You die over and over, maybe watch the little tutorial repeat, and go in with a newfound sense of what to do. At least so you think.

It can take a bit to figure out how to play properly, so here's what's up with the game in convenient text form:

How to play Splix.io

Your goal in Splix.io is to take over as many blocks (essentially your territory) as possible while protecting what you've already claimed from other players. The more blocks and kills you get, the higher your score and the higher you are on the leaderboard.

How to take over new blocks

In order to take over and color in new blocks you need to expand out of your territory, surround a section of gray blocks, and return to your already-established territory. In bullet points the process is:

1. Leave your territory
2. Surround gray blocks near your territory, doing a three-sided square shape with your territory being the fourth side
3. Go back into your territory to claim the surrounded blocks as your own and change their color

Body specifics

Your body has two points: your head and your tail. You don't have to worry so much about the head, but if another player hits your tail it's game over. You have to take this into account as it's going to affect literally every move you make.

When you leave your personal colored territory your tail is vulnerable so you want to take over new territory very carefully. When you're new to the game stick to taking smaller areas at a time with smaller square shapes.

As a side note, you have no tail when you are inside of your own territory. You're safe in your own territory and other players may have trouble seeing you, both can be used to your advantage. 

How other players kill you (and you can kill them)

This can also be a little confusing when you first start, mostly because new players overextend.

As mentioned above, if another player hits your tail you die. The same goes for them: if you see another player outside of their territory and run into their tail, they will die. This is why you don't want to stray too far from your territory even in situations where you think you're alone. 

As shown in the last section, when you are inside your own color your tail disappears and your head blends in with your blocks (though your head is circular and visible). You are only totally safe inside your own territory.

Killing isn't totally necessary but you'll often find you want to go out of your way to kill other players encroaching on your territory.

That's it for the "how to" for basic Splix.io gameplay. The game is certainly one of the more unique .io games to have surfaced over the past few months and it's deceptively simple gameplay is easy to get addicted to, not to mention the rage from other players messing with your territory. With a little practice you'll not only get the fundamentals down, you'll get good at Splix.io.

There are a slew of .io games floating around, am I right? With the popularity of the big three (Agar.io, Slither.io, and Diep.io) it seems every small developer is hopping on the .io game train. 

It may be hard to pin down the best newer .io games when there are so many, but it's definitely possible to tell which are growing the fastest or have the brightest future. And right now those are Splix.io and Driftin.io.

Most games of this "genre" are in fact clones of the more popular options like Diep.io and Slither.io. There are not a whole lot of original options, but they do exist. The aforementioned Splix.io and Driftin.io are just two of the many original .io games out there, but these two stand out on their own merits for doing their own amazingly fun things.

Why Driftin.io?

This one is still very much in active development and is relatively new. You won't see jam-packed servers just yet, but they're more populated by the day and you'll most often be put directly in servers with other active, competitive players.

In Driftin.io your goal is to make 20 laps around the rectangle-shaped course before the other players. That sounds easy enough, but the game's class choices and hyper-aggressive players make reaching even 10 laps quite the task. Hazard players make life suffering.

The game has a total of seven classes and two game modes to choose from at the time of writing, which gives you a few ways to play. It also allows for party play, as a racing game should. Just be aware that, much like the early days of Diep.io, the game is changing at a rapid pace and may see massive changes over the coming weeks and months.

Driftin.io gets a spotlight here now only because it's a real taste of cut-throat racing fun, but also because developer Sidney de Vries is hard at work adjusting and adding to the game based on player feedback. Give it a shot, you may just get addicted to the taste of your opponents' salt mines.

Why Splix.io?

This is one game that sort of came out of nowhere for me and has absolutely become one of my main timewaster games. It's slower-paced than Driftin.io -- and despite its benign looks, it's just as cutthroat, if not more so.

In Splix.io your goal is to color as much of the map as possible with your color, which you do by surrounding a mass of blocks with your body and then reconnecting with blocks you've already colored in. This sounds mundane but you are in competition with about 99 other people per server, and you need to take whoever you can out to protect your colored block territory.

This is a game of territory claim and protection. You must expand while trying to protect your territory from other players, who are often just a thirsty to get you away from their blocks as you are with yours. This makes for a number of close-quarters color-blending and playing chicken, since as your territory gets larger so does your need to protect what you have.

This .io game probably gets me more angry than any other. I mean, who likes spreading their territory in a game only to have it taken away by other players arbitrarily? A big part of Splix.io is playing it cool and that is really hard to do.

Both of these .io games are hot on the scene and are steadily growing. They're currently only available via browser for the time being but it's hard to imagine them staying browser-only when the big audience (and money) is in mobile. For now enjoy these games in their infancy and marvel at the creativity of their hard working developers -- would you really expect there to be these types of PvP games? Me neither, and what's exactly why these games are special.