Agar.io is a nice arcade game that can really help you waste a few hours on colorful cells fighting each other. The game is definitely recommended for every fan of similar free-for-all arcade games. Agar.io is a massively multiplayer online action game created by Matheus Valadares. Players control a cell in a map representing a petri dish. The goal is to gain as much mass as possible by eating agar and cells smaller than the player's cell, while avoiding larger ones which can eat the player's cell (s).

Agar.io on mobile is one of the most-downloaded games of 2015 – and just got its first major update.

The cell-eat-cell multiplayer game has been one of the most popular games on the App Store and Google Play since its launch in July, with millions of players trying to get to the top of the leaderboard and eating other players along the way. Now, we’ve added a some new features to the game.

Track your stats

You’ll now be able to keep track of your player stats, as you can in the browser version of the game. You’ll be able to see your total mass eaten, your highest and average scores, plus your longest survival time among others.

New premium skins

We’re adding over 80 new skins to the game! They include black holes, Uranus, apples, baseballs, bowling balls, frogs, pandas and some slightly weirder ones too…

Level up

We’re bringing the profile system from the browser version to mobile: as well as tracking stats, you can also gain XP and level up as you play which gives you a small boost to your starting mass.

The update to Agar.io on mobile is out now on both iOS and Android – download it now!

This article was first published in the May 2016 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

You might not have heard of it, but in 2015 the third most trending search term on Google was 'Agar.io'. Only basketball player Lamar Odom and Charlie Hebdo had bigger leaps in relative popularity than the massive multiplayer online game, which was released last April by gaming network Miniclip.

In Turkey, the game, in which players take control of a circular cell that consumes others, was even co-opted for political purposes: two smaller parties printed billboard ads depicting themselves as cells eating bigger parties. 'Games can often mean hundred-million-dollar budgets,' says Rob Small, founder and CEO of Miniclip, its publisher. 'It's been fascinating to see how such a simplistic game can grow into such a successful product.' And although
the company is now a tax exile, in origin it is a heroic London startup.

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Started by Small in 2001 and now based out of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Miniclip claims to have more than 200 million monthly players for its mobile games, including 60 million for Agar.io, which has attracted two billion YouTube views.

Miniclip Krunker Io

'Mobile now represents about 95 per cent of the business,' says Small, 40. The 170-person company, which has had 800 million downloads of its games, moved into smartphone apps in 2009. Its mobile prowess - initially revenues were produced by browser ads but now come from in-app purchases - persuaded Chinese giant Tencent to purchase a majority stake in February 2015.

One of the reasons Agar.io did so well was the people who shared it - YouTuber PewDiePie, who has more than 42 million subscribers, uploaded nine videos of himself playing the game. To make sure its titles have popular appeal, Miniclip picks up on games that have had success: Agar.io, for instance, was originally developed and released by 20-year-old Brazilian Matheus Valadares. 'We started working with him towards the end of April 2015, when the game already had more than
five million players a day,' says Small.

Agar.io Miniclip Images

Valadares puts Agar.io's appeal down to simplicity. 'You don't need to read the instructions to start playing,' he says. 'The initial version didn't even have them.'