Controls

Mouse or ←↑↓→ to move. Space or Click fires half of you forward — the only way to catch something faster than you. Halves rejoin after about a minute, sooner if you wait under a green pad.

Eating players

You need to be clearly bigger — about a tenth larger — and to cover most of them. Half of what you take scatters as food, so a kill is worth collecting and a bystander can steal it.

What is worth eating

• Pellets — everywhere, tiny, and most of what you will ever eat.
• Worms — forty pellets each. The whole body counts, not just the head.
• Jellyfish — worth more than a worm, and harder to catch. Every third one pays a bonus.
• Krill shoals — twelve worms if you take one whole, and the hardest catch on the map. Swimming at a shoal parts it; you have to pin it against a green pad and hold it there. Splitting to surround one pays more.
• Green pads — the biggest prize. Clear one at 2.5x its size and half its volume is yours.

Green pads

Shelter, if you are under two fifths of the pad's size — you vanish from everyone except others sharing it. Outgrow that and it merely blocks you. At 2.5x its size you can clear it.

Red spike pads

They never kill. Every touch tears off a share of you and scatters the rest, and the bigger you are the more it takes — touching one again soon after costs far more. Once you are below a starting cell's size they stop hurting you and only shove you away.

The barbs are the hazard, not the disc: the water between two spokes is safe if you are small enough to fit through it.

The shallows

The pale shelf around the shore is a refuge. Under 40k you cross it at full speed; above that you wade at a quarter pace, so a small cell can escape into it and a large one loses the chase by following. The sand itself just bounces you back.

Getting very large

Past about 250k you begin losing mass every second, and the rate climbs the bigger you get. There is a size where what you earn and what you lose balance out — growing past it is a fight rather than a reward.