A Review of the ``Agario'' Video Game

Under review is a fun video game playable in WWW browsers, available at this domain: https://agar.io

The linked website includes advertisements, but they're very easily blocked without much resistance.

Boredom and circumstance have led me to seek entertainment through that most horrible and ghastly of
programs, the WWW browser.  I remembered a game I'd once played a decade ago, Agario, and found that
it still exists, just the same as I recall.  Lacking anything better for review, I selected it here.

The core idea of the game is very simple: All players act as a semi-circular object akin to bacteria
with the goal of collecting mass and growing; inert food is periodically deposited, but that primary
way to grow past a certain size is by eating sufficiently smaller players.  Larger players move more
slowly than smaller players, but the player is able to split his mass in a certain direction to take
players sufficiently nearby and smaller.  The last major game element are the viruses, distinguished
from players by their spikes; eating one splits the player into many small parts easily eaten by the
others; viruses are the primary reason for the final command, ejecting a small amount of mass in one
direction, for viruses can be fed and thrown at other players.  After a short time, the parts of one
player slowly rejoin into a whole.  This simple game, like many other simple games, is very complex.

This is a game one can't win; players merely survive longer than others.  My longest play times have
been close to an hour, achieving status as largest entity for a time, and as short as instant death.

I oft-noticed, after refamiliarizing myself with the game, myself to be in spaces with many machines
playing at various levels of competence and awareness, but they often don't manage to spoil the game
for me.  Machine players tend to share a single simple strategy, and learning it in order to eat the
lesser players usually adds a fun element to this game, and makes accidentally losing to them worse.

Technically, the worst part of this game is its network implementation.  All WWW browsers are gimped
by their corporate owners, so use of UDP isn't an option for video games implemented with them.  Any
argument for simplicity or security from those monopolistic owners is clearly false, for only useful
and pleasant features are ever removed from them, or restricted, in order to reinforce their illegal
monopolies.  Sometimes my sessions are ruined by the game slowing down and then quickly catching up.

In brief, a simple game like this is a fine way to waste time when one may only use the WWW browser.
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