Sinkhole Online

About Sinkhole Online

Play Sinkhole live with other people. Quick play drops you into a public city, and Make a room gives you a private one with an invite link and code for friends. Everyone swallows the same city at once, bots make up the numbers, and a new round starts for everyone every couple of minutes.

Sinkhole is a free two-minute arena game set in a little toy city. You are a hole in the ground. Slide under anything smaller than you and it tips over the edge and drops in: traffic cones, people, benches, trees, cars, buses, and in the end whole houses and towers. Every bite makes the hole wider, so the city gets easier to eat the more you eat. Seven to nine computer holes are doing the same thing, and the biggest hole when the clock runs out wins.

Also called: hole io game, black hole game, swallow the city.

How to play Sinkhole

1. Press Play. Your hole has a sun-yellow rim and a tag that says You.
2. On a computer, point with the mouse: the hole slides toward the pointer, faster the further away it is. WASD or the arrow keys work too. On a phone, put a finger down anywhere and drag like a joystick; lift your finger to stop.
3. Glide over small things to swallow them. Anything that fits inside the hole falls in once its middle is over the pit. Things that are too big just sit over the hole until you have grown enough.
4. Each thing you swallow grows your hole. Big things grow it a lot, and the camera pulls back as you get bigger so you can see more of the city.
5. A clearly bigger hole that slides over a smaller one swallows it. Keep away from bigger rims and go after smaller ones.
6. After two minutes the round ends. You see your rank by size, how big you got, a tally of everything you swallowed and your best size. Play again drops you into a fresh city.

Rules

• An object falls in when its footprint is smaller than the hole and its centre is inside the hole.
• Size is the total of everything you have swallowed. A cone or a person adds 1 to 1.5, a tree 7, a car 12, a bus 36, a house 60, a shop 110 and a tower 200. The hole's area grows with its size.
• The things in the city come in tiers. Cones, people, hydrants, bins, benches and bushes fit a brand-new hole. Then come trees and cars, then kiosks, fountains and buses, then houses and shops, and finally towers.
• A hole can swallow another hole whose radius is no more than 88% of its own, once most of the smaller hole is inside it. The eater takes half the smaller hole's size.
• A swallowed hole keeps the other half of its size and pops back up somewhere quieter after about two and a half seconds. For three seconds after it appears its rim flashes, and no one can swallow it.
• Bigger holes move a little slower than small ones, so a small hole can usually get away if it sees trouble coming.
• Nothing grows back. When the city is gone, the only food left is other holes.
• The ranking is by size at the final buzzer. The game pauses by itself when you switch tabs; press P or Escape to pause yourself.

Sinkhole tips and strategy

• Start on the pavements. Cones, people, bins and hydrants line the edges of every block and fit a brand-new hole. Add the benches and bushes, and a few quick laps round a block will get you big enough for trees and cars.
• Keep an eye on what is just too big. A car or a house sitting over your hole means you are close. Swallow a few more small things and come back.
• Parks are full of trees and bushes, and cars and buses drive down every road. Those are the fastest mid-sized growth in the city.
• Houses, shops and towers are huge prizes. Grab them before a bigger hole does, because they only exist once.
• Watch the leaderboard. If a bot is bigger than you, treat its rim as a danger zone and swing wide around it.
• A hole that has just popped back up is safe while its rim flashes. Use those few seconds to get away from whoever swallowed you.
• In the last half minute, a well-timed swallow of a smaller hole can swing the ranking. Hunt a little, but don't chase so far that you miss the food.