About Diep.io

Diep.io was released on 16 April 2016 by Brazilian developer Matheus Valadares — the same person who had created Agar.io the year before and effectively invented the .io genre in the process. Diep.io was his follow-up, and it is a substantially deeper game: underneath a simple top-down shooter about killing polygons sits a genuine character-building system with dozens of viable end states.

The loop starts trivially. You are a small circular tank. You shoot squares, triangles and pentagons floating around the map, and destroying them earns experience. Every level gives you a stat point to spend across eight attributes — health regeneration, max health, body damage, bullet speed, bullet penetration, bullet damage, reload and movement speed. How you allocate those points is the first half of your build.

The second half is the class tree. At levels 15, 30 and 45 you choose an upgrade, branching from the basic tank into increasingly specialised forms. Twin splits your fire into two barrels; Sniper trades rate of fire for range and accuracy; Machine Gun goes the other way entirely. Further down the tree sit the genuinely strange ones — Necromancer, which converts the map's squares into a swarm of drones under your control, Overlord with its commandable drone fleet, Booster with rear-facing barrels used purely for propulsion. There are dozens of end classes, and they play so differently that switching branches feels like changing games.

That variety is why Diep.io has outlasted almost every game of its generation. A Sniper build and a Necromancer build have almost nothing in common tactically, so the game keeps offering something new well past the point where a simpler .io title would be exhausted. It also means there is a real metagame around which classes counter which — drone classes struggle against high-penetration bullets, snipers evaporate if anything closes the distance.

Modes extend the idea further. Free-for-all is the default, but Team modes, Domination, Tag and Maze each reshape how builds perform. Domination in particular rewards coordinated builds around objectives rather than pure individual power. A leaderboard tracks the top scores on your server and there is a region selector, which matters more than it looks — Diep.io is a game of leading shots, and latency makes that harder.

Publishing history has moved around: Miniclip handled the mobile versions from 2016 to 2021, Addicting Games from 2021 to 2024, and VexxusArts since 2024. The version playable on this page is a browser build distributed through Playhop, Yandex's games platform — it follows the original's rules, stat system and class tree closely, and like everything else here it runs in a tab with no account required.

Tips for Diep.io

• Do not spread your stat points evenly. A build that puts everything into three or four attributes beats a balanced one at almost every level — decide early whether you are a bullet build, a body-damage build or a drone build.
• Farm pentagons, not squares. Pentagons give far more experience, and the pentagon nest in the corner of the map is the fastest route to level 45 if you can survive there.
• Turn on auto-fire with E when farming. It saves your hand and lets you concentrate on positioning rather than clicking, though you should turn it off in fights where you want to control your fire.
• Learn to lead your shots. Bullets travel; every kill against a moving target requires aiming where they are going. This is the single skill that separates competent players from the rest.
• Snipers should never be caught in the open at close range. If something fast closes on you, retreat toward the map edge where you can only be approached from one side.
• Against drone classes like Overlord and Necromancer, prioritise bullet penetration. Drones die to penetrating fire and become nearly unstoppable against builds that cannot clear them.
• Check your server region before investing an hour into a build. Leading shots on a high-latency server is guesswork, and losing a level 45 tank to lag is a genuinely painful way to end a session.

Did you know?

• Diep.io was created by Brazilian developer Matheus Valadares, who had previously made Agar.io — the game that started the entire .io genre.
• The browser version launched on 16 April 2016, with mobile versions following in July of the same year.
• Players allocate points across eight distinct stats and choose class upgrades at levels 15, 30 and 45, producing dozens of viable end-game builds.
• The Necromancer class converts the map's neutral squares into a controllable drone swarm, one of the most unusual mechanics in any .io game.
• Publishing rights to the mobile versions have changed hands twice: Miniclip from 2016 to 2021, Addicting Games from 2021 to 2024, and VexxusArts from 2024 onward.
• Diep.io supports several distinct modes — Free For All, Team, Domination, Tag and Maze — each of which changes which builds are actually competitive.