Game Review: Hole.io (Mobile – Free to Play)

Hole.io is a hell of a popular game and after playing it, it’s easy to see why as it’s fairly addictive. It’s is also the perfect example of Voodoo’s ‘one more go’ style of games. That being said, it is a seriously flawed game with issues that end up taking away from the overall enjoyment of the experience.

This review is for version 1.3.1.

Control a hole around a map and swallow everything in sight. The more you consume, the bigger you’ll grow. At first you’ll only be able to absorb small things such as park benches, bins and the occasional person but as you grow you’ll be eventually swallowing skyscrapers! Provided you’ve not run out of time. You see, you’ve only got two minutes no matter the game-mode. So managing to swallow the whole city is near impossible.

A lot of this is because of the random spawn that can see you start nowhere near anything you can gobble up meaning a lot of time is wasted trying to find something so you can grow. This problem is made all the worse when playing some of the other game modes.

There are four available in Hole.io. We have classic that sees you compete against the AI to see who can get the highest score. Solo run where you are tasked with eating 100% of the city, local multiplayer and battle. The last one there is easily the worst of the modes as the AI are so on the ball that you’ll be quickly gobbled up especially if you get a bad spawn point.

Add that buildings obscure your view sometimes and managing to avoid an incoming enemy is completely luck based.

That is far from the least of Hole.io’s problems though. The game suffers from lag, something that becomes more and more prominent the longer you play it. It’s not a smooth experience and the larger your hole, the more problems you’ll encounter.

Then there is the lack of different maps. Hole.io has just one, just one map to play on. It’s a real surprising lack of content but at least you can customise the look of your hole…that’s something, I guess?

Unsurprisingly, Voodoo run a lot of ads with this being a free to play game but this might be one of the most excessive releases yet as after every game, an ad will pop up. Of course you can pay to remove ads and once again, the developer disappoints by asking for £2.99. There just isn’t enough content or replay value to make that worthwhile! Sure it’s addictive but that’s quickly going to fade away as the problems become more and more apparent.

This could be a great game if they just weren’t so sloppy.