Rip-offs are a pretty large portion of the Google Play marketplace and popular .io games are definitely not exempt from being ripped off. Slither.io and Diep.io are currently the two biggest targets for lazy developers to rip off and pop on mobile and many of these games are not really worth the install.

Games like Snake.io, Crawlio, and the others generally have one big difference that not only sets them apart from the original Slither.io, but makes them more appealing to non-competitive players: They are not online.

Slither.io rip-offs are generally offline games

Big surprise, right? Not for some players – if you browse through the reviews for all these games you see waves of players commenting on the lack of online gameplay.

What this means is in these games you are only playing against bots instead of actual people as you do in the actual Slither.io game. Often these bots are easy to kill and do not have very good AI, meaning these games are generally pretty easy to get big in.

Crawlio is 100% offline.

Going against actual players in the real Slither.io is much more challenging and rewarding than playing against bots in the many rip-off games. But that doesn’t mean these games don’t have their place.

Some people don’t like having to play against other players because, well.. it’s hard. Other players are unpredictable and some people are just really good at the game. Someone who isn’t amazing at it may have more fun playing against AI instead of real people.

Playing Slither.io rip-offs makes you better at the real game

What? How? It’s elementary, my dear reader!

How are you supposed to practice moving to zoom toward food and cut off other players if you die quickly in the official game? Dying over and over again is one answer, but another is simply to load up one of the many rip-off games and practice, practice, practice.

The movement in a lot of these games are similar if not identical to Slither.io. This means you can get the basics to getting good at the game down in a safe offline game like Snake.io and once you’re confident you can move onto the player versus player gameplay of Slither.io. Makes sense, right? You’ve got to start somewhere!

There are different skins

If you’re a sucker for customization over gameplay difficulty, you’ll be happy to find many of these rip off games have more skin options than Slither.io–though they don’t necessarily always look great.

Apps that claim to specifically give skins for Slither.io do not work, ever. Don’t download them.

Some of them are actually online

It’s weird to say they’re offline then turn around and say some are online, right?

Most of the popular Slither.io rip offs are not online games, but a few are. Orborous, for example, does have online play. And it looks pretty cool to boot.

But the more popular Snake.io and Crawlio are offline only.. and let’s not get into Crawlio’s frequent ads.

If you want a game similar to Slither.io that is online to play on your Android device, make sure you pay attention to the game’s description on Google Play and look for the words “online multiplayer” or “servers”.

For instance, Orborous specifically mentions it has online play and multiple game modes.

Be aware of what you’re downloading before you do tap that “install” button to save you some headache. Don’t expect these games to have online multiplayer if they do not specifically mention it in their descriptions.

These games certainly have their place and it’s understandable why some people, specifically anyone who wants to slither around in singleplayer or want their snake to look a specific way Slither.io doesn’t support, but nothing really beats the real deal.