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Ever wanted to control a hole that slowly swallows a city, growing larger the whole time? Hole.io is a simple and incredibly fun game that lets you explore this very concept. By moving your finger, you can direct a massive hole around a cute 3d city and try to suck up the whole thing as fast as you can.
Hole.io is a free game for iOS and Android. In the game, you use your finger to control the movement of a small hole in the ground of a cartoonish 3D city. As you bring the hole under objects, the game's simulated physics will allow small objects to fall into your hole.
Some objects might not fall in immediately. Instead, objects with a dimension that's larger than the hole will get stuck. You can run them into other objects to adjust their position. swallow up smaller objects to make the hole bigger, or use these stuck objects as battering rams to dislodge things like buildings and cars and make them easier to manipulate.
The goal of the game is to suck up as many objects as you can. At first, your hole is relatively small, letting you swallow people, trees, fences, and not much else. As you eat more and more objects, your hole grows bigger. This happens in stages, not gradually, so you'll have a bit of time stuck at each size as you work your way through the game.
Hole.io has two main modes. In classic mode, you're the only hole in town. You have two minutes to make your hole as large as you can and send as much of the town as possible into the infinite blackness. In battle mode, you play a battle royale-style game with a number of computer-controlled holes. These holes work just the same as other objects. If you run into a hole that's bigger than yours, it will eat you and end your run. Collide with a hole that's smaller than yours, however, and you'll eat it instead, potentially allowing you to grow even larger.
As you play Hole.io, you'll earn points. These points increase your level, which in turn helps you unlock skins that can change what your hole looks like. Some other skins can also be unlocked by eating certain objects in-game with your hole.
Hole.io is fantastically simple and fun. While it's not a complex game on the surface, the simple control scheme and intuitive physics engine make the game an absolute blast to play. The way your hole grows in size, the game's physics, and the layout of the map work together to create a puzzle that's incredibly engaging to solve. You probably won't perfect your strategy at first, but you'll have a lot of fun working your way through iterations of your strategies until you find one that works to make your hole big enough to eat up the entire town.
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Hole.io has two layers of strategy. On one layer, you can master your small, tactical control of the hole. By moving through buildings and objects in the right way, you can minimize downtime and ensure that they fall into the hole the first time. Getting an oddly shaped building like the town hall stuck in your hole when you don't want it there can kill your run, so mastering this layer will make you a lot more consistent at making a big hole, fast.
That said, you should work on the bigger strategic part of your gameplay first. The map in Hole.io is far from random. Instead, it's generated using a set of fairly restrictive rules. On one map, your goal when you spawn in should be to quickly find the park and then do a lap around it, eating up all of the trees and fences. Look for a blue car with white stripes and head in the direction it's pointed to quickly find the tile with the park. With a bit of practice, this strategy will give you a great head start every time.
Once you've done that, roll around on the inside of the park and you'll get your hole big enough to start munching on cars. One lap around some of the building complexes with parking lots and you should be big enough to zip on over to the tall vertical townhomes, which will get your hole large enough to eat the rest of the city.
The other maps can be similarly exploited. Identify map tiles with a high density of small, vertical objects, figure out where they spawn, and make a beeline towards them as soon as you can. Once you've grown a bit, move on to the next clump of objects you can eat, eat them, and continue until you've devoured the map.
Now that you've mastered finding the right things to eat, let's talk about how to control your hole. In general, you should try to avoid going straight through objects that are the same size as you. Instead, go under things bigger than you (like buildings at first) and eat up things that fall smoothly into your hole. If you're at about the same size as a building, try to avoid getting under it so you don't knock it off-axis and create problems for yourself later.
If you find that you've got a building stuck in your hole at a jaunty angle, don't panic. If it's not much bigger than your hole, look for a sidewalk, park, or another grouping of small objects and try to eat those as fast as you can. With some luck, you'll be able to grow large enough to clear your blockage.
If this isn't an option, you'll have to use other objects to dislodge the thing that's blocking your hole. Look for big buildings and try ramming the thing stuck in your hole's gullet into them at various angles. Remember, Hole.io has a somewhat realistic physics engine, so try to make things collide at an angle that makes sense. With a bit of practice, you'll be able to rotate the object so it falls in or dislodge it from your hole, allowing you to eat other things.
Are you a Hole.io master? Let us know your best tricks in the comments below! We'd love to hear about the best strategies for each map, which unlockable skins are your favorite, and your high scores.
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