Video Game / Surviv.io

Surviv.io was a top-down shooter battle royale .io Game. Up to 80 players spawn at random points on an island, where they must search for weapons and items, and kill each other. Last player or team standing wins.

In other words, it's a simplified and accelerated version of Player Unknowns Battlegrounds , playable in your browser.

See also BattleRoyale.io, Foes.io, Thelast.io and Zombs Royale.io, for the other examples of battle royale .io games.

Not to be confused with Survivorio, an unrelated rougelike mobile game developed by Gorilla Games and published by Habby.

On December 6, 2019, the game was acquired by new developers, Kongregate. Around March of 2023, Kongregate shut down the game atfer announcing its sunsetting one month prior.

Tropes present in Surviv.io:

• Advancing Wall of Doom: The "Red Zone", which acts exactly as a wall that moves at a certain time intervals. The game's logo, which is a standard radiation symbol, and the red zone advancement clock, which uses the same symbol, all-but-confirms that it's actually radiation. However, it doesn't live up to much of the "doom" part at first. In fact, consuming pills, or multiple sodas, will initially allow you to regenerate health faster than it'll take it way. It gets more damaging as it expands, however, so that by the end of the round, such tactics will become unviable.
• A.K.A.-47: Zigzagged. AK-47 itself keeps its real name, along with a few other real-world guns. However, HK416 has been renamed to M416, while the Beretta 93 "Raffica" pistol had been renamed to M93R, and Glock 18C was shortened to G18C.
• All-or-Nothing Reloads: Zig-zagged. Automatic weapons are reloaded in this manner, but all shotguns (besides the twin-barrel MP220), and rifles like Mosin-Nagant are reloaded bullet-by-bullet, and can be fired halfway through the reload sequence.
• Ammunition Backpack: Played straight. While players can still carry a decent amount of stuff just on their clothing somewhere ^note about 120 9mm ammo, 90 7.62 and 5.56 ammo and 15 12 gauge, alongside 5 bandages, a medkit, 2 sodas and adrenaline pills, in addition to two guns and up 3 grenades of all 3 kinds, for a total of 9, getting a small backpack doubles what they can carry, and the normal and military backpacks increase your carrying capacity even further.
• Anyone Can Die: While getting good armor or equipment, especially from the start, certainly does a lot to improve your chances, there's nothing that'll save you from getting shredded in seconds should a skilled player get the drop on you.
• Art Evolution: At first, the guns in the players' hands were represented as lines of varying length and color. Later weapons have more distinct appearances, and older guns are sometimes reskinned and granted a new appearance to match the new standard (such as making the double barrels of the MP220 actually visible).
• Awesome, but Impractical: The M134 minigun. Ridiculously massive ammo capacity and rate of fire, but at the cost of a massive reload time, and even worse, a HUGE movement speed penalty while holding it, which gets even worse when firing, making you a sitting duck, especially when there are multiple opponents nearby.
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • Played straight for the Potato Cannon in the Potato Mode, which has an ammo capacity of 4, but will regenerate its potatoes indefinitely (and is also the only weapon in that mode that doesn't get randomly switched after you kill someone with it). Averted for everything else.
  • The Endless Ammo perk, limited to certain game modes, is extraordinarily powerful when paired with either LMGs or the weapons using extremely rare ammo like the Deagle or AWM-S: the lucky player can suddenly spam these weapons, and even shoot offscreen in the hope of hitting something suddenly makes sense as a strategy (unless it's Potato Mode, in which case you'll probably accidentally destroy a potato and have your cool weapon turned into something worse). The Tank class in the class-based mode has this perk by default, and their class-specific crates drop DP-28 LMG to go with it. Moreover, Tanks can also allow their squadmates to get all the ammo they find, since they themselves won't need any of it.
• Combat Medic:
  • In 50 vs. 50 mode, the Medic role grants the player a Bonesaw melee weapon, top-tier armor, fully stocked medical equipment, and the unique ability to share the effect of healing items with nearby players and revive multiple players at the same time.
  • The class-based mode features the "Medic" class, which even has the so-called "Combat Medic" perk. However, rather than letting the player heal others, the perk instead boosts their speed when they heal themselves with bandages or medkits. It is also paired with Windwalk, which raises speed when the player gets damaged, with the end result of letting the medic reach truly insane speeds. Not only can they thus dodge gunfire better than anyone (with the possible exception of waterborne Scouts), but they are also able to immediately close the distance and go for melee with their bone saws, with frightening effectiveness.
• Combat Resuscitation:
  • In duo and squad mode, players who run out of health are left to crawl on the ground, until they either get finished off by the enemies, bleed out on their own, or are revived by their team-mates.
  • An "Auto-Resuscitation" perk can be obtained in some modes. It is possibly the single rarest perk in the game, and is obviously enormously useful, though it still requires for the player's opponents to be distracted by either their teammates or another threat for long enough to not notice them crawling away to some bush and then reviving themselves.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: All of the weapons' ammo types are matched to a color, and appear on the ground as squares of that specific color, while the weapons using it are circled with said color.
  • Yellow: The most common 9mm ammo, used by most of the starting guns: all of the pistols (besides Deagle), MAC-10, MP-5 and UMP-9. Players generally stop using these if they reach the late game, though the rare Vector SMG and the semi-automatic sniper rifle VSS are rare exceptions.
  • Red: the 12-gauge shotgun ammo. The squares with this ammo contain 5-10 times less slugs than all the others, due to the much larger size of each shell.
  • Blue: 7,62 ammo. Used by the OTs-38 revolver, AK-47, SCAR-H, Mosin-Nagant rifle, DP-28 light machine gun and bunch of other "heavy" weapons. The winning players will generally wield at least one of the "blue" or "green" weapons.
  • Green: 5,56 ammo. It is mainly associated with the M416 assault rifle and the FAMAS burst rifle. However, heavy LMGs like M249 and QBB-97 use this ammo as well.
  • Orange: Flares. You always only find one Flare next to a Flare Gun, which can then be used to summon an Airdrop; however, every other player will be immediately alerted, and those nearby will certainly head over to fight over its contents. During the 50-50 modes, each team's leader automatically starts with a Flare Gun.
  • Black: .50. The only type of round used by the Deagle, and is only found next to Deagles.
  • Olive: .308 Subsonic. Only found in the Airdrop containers next to the AWM-S sniper rifle, which is also the only weapon that uses it in normal mode. It is possible to obtain the Mk 20 SSR in Savanna mode.
  • Purple: .45 ACP Only found in the Desert maps, next to Colt Peacemaker revolvers and a few variations of regular weapons that use this ammo.
  • Also, the pictograms that represent the weapons themselves when they are laying on the ground (which are different from their appearance in your hands) are always drawn in green, whereas the pictograms of all the other helpful objects (backpacks, armor, helmets, sodas, etc.) are drawn in white.
• Concealment Equals Cover: Averted, in that the two concepts are mutually exclusive in the game. Objects that provide cover from bullets ^note until they get worn down and destroyed by sustained fire like rocks and trees will not conceal you from the top-down perspective of the other players. (Though standing beneath the foliage will obscure you, and standing at the intersection of two trees may be enough to hide you completely, especially if you wear right-shaded clothing.) On the other hand, you will be concealed by hiding in the bushes, or under the tables, but this offers absolutely no protection from bullets if someone does shoot in that direction.
• Concussion Frags: The grenades here are notable for their long delay-fuse. Just throwing one at someone you sighted is useless: they'll manage to run away (or even charge at you, depending on their equipment and aggressiveness) long before it explodes. You generally have to cook them for about 3-4 seconds (not longer, or it may explode in your hand) and throw them at someone who hasn't sighted you yet to have a chance of scoring kills with these. Thus, they are used more in order to dislodge the enemy players from behind whichever obstacle they are hiding, and/or to interrupt their healing.
• Controllable Helplessness: The aforementioned downed state. February 2019 update made it a bit more controllable, by allowing downed players to open and close doors: earlier, an enemy player who found someone downed in the house could just close the door and leave them to bleed out.
• Crate Expectations: Much of the equipment will be found inside plain wooden crates that are larger than a player in size, but may only contain a soda or a pistol if you are unlucky. There are also grenade-only crates, and faction-branded crates (mostly the Soviet ones, but also a few others) that are guaranteed to contain multiple weapons and other items, and so are far more valuable.
• Critical Existence Failure: The amount of health the player has doesn't affect their fighting capacity in any way.
• Critical Hit: Each shot has a 15% chance of landing a headshot, dealing increased damage.
• Death from Above: Strobes are a special type of grenade that can be found in certain game modes, and which can be used to call an airstrike, raining down bombs over an area after several seconds.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Played straight in the special modes that include perks: someone who possesses a "Martyrdom" perk will drop a bunch of explosives as they die, which will detonate a couple of seconds later. It's pretty much the least useful perk since it only activates when the player has already lost, and experienced players have more than enough time to get away from the explosion (although it'll still scatter the loot in all directions). It is more helpful in the squad mode, but still not a desirable substitute to other perks.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Destroying various furniture inside the buildings is the way to find a lot of valuable loot. Don't overdo it, however; while desks, bed stands, pots and even toilets are guaranteed to contain good stuff, beds themselves contain nothing, tables are there to hide under, and items like stoves, ovens and computer consoles will first produce smoke as you pummel them, and then straight-up explode, likely killing you immediately.
• Edible Ammunition: Potato mode has, obviously, weaponized potatoes in a few forms
  • A throwable potato which deals small damage, and more importantly causes the target to drop an item.
  • The Potato Cannon, which fires exploding potatoes.
  • The Spud Gun, which rapidly fires french fries that briefly make the target fat, slowing them down and making them a bigger target.
• Emote Command: These replace chat as the means of player communication. There are two separate wheels for these: one for the smilies, thumbs-up/down and other cosmetic emotes (which can be won/purchased by those with accounts), and the wheel of utility emotes that lets you request healing or a specific ammo type when playing in a duo/squad, and is also used for pinging the points of interest on the map.
  • The Potato mode replaces all emotes with the potato one. That even applies to the health and ammo ones, though you can still use pings like before.
• Everything Breaks: Downplayed. Besides Die, Chair, Die! example, a range of other objects can also be destroyed, whether with weapons or just by your bare fists. Bushes may provide cover but only take a few bullets to get cut down, for instance; trees and stones will shrink in radius as they get attacked, before eventually getting destroyed. The thin wooden walls of shacks and outhouses can also be destroyed, along with the windows, doors, and internal walls of the proper houses. The greenhouse and teahouse can also be completely demolished. However, houses' retaining walls will never get damaged, and the houses are completely safe to be in if you are playing a 50-50 mode and there's an airstrike. (Though you should still stay away from doors and windows.) Bafflingly, same also applies to the shipping containers, as they'll simply ricochet all bullets away from them, and are equally unaffected by the explosions of any kind. (Although beware if someone shoots into a container, as then all of their bullets will ricochet off the walls, and likely end up hitting you.)
• Friendly Fireproof: Your teammates' shots and punches don't hurt you. Neither will grenades, unless you were the one who dropped it.
• Frying Pan of Doom:
  • A very rare item found in airdrop crates. The frying pan has a longer range than most other melee weapons, very strong damage, and can deflect bullets while on your back.
  • Played for laughs with the Cast Ironskin perk, which outright makes the player wear a huge frying pan as their armor. They thus become larger and easier to hit, but also get 30% damage reduction (on top of any reduction already provided by their vests and helmets), and the bullets will ricochet off them as well, potentially damaging the very player who tried to kill them. In the class-based mode, Tanks possess this perk by default, alongside the Endless Ammo one.
• Gatling Good: The M134 Minigun. It boasts a massive ammo capacity and extreme DPS, and unlike most video game miniguns, it doesn't have a spin-up time; just click and it already fires at full speed! However, due to its weight, it also greatly reduces your movement speed when held.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: Many of the loot-containing items have the versions marked in gold to signify that they contain rarer, superior items to their normal versions, which are often preset as well. This includes golden shipping crates in the docks, lockers with golden locks, shacks with a golden crest on their roof (which are guaranteed to have a golden pot inside that contains SPAS-12), and the airdrop crates with golden edges.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: The default "weapon" everyone starts with. While getting a weapon is obviously your first priority, fists also shouldn't be underestimated. In close quarters in particular, unarmed players can still kill others, especially if their opponent had a weak weapon like M9 or OT-38, a long-barreled one like DP-28 or Mosin-Nagant that was too cumbersome up close, or was simply stuck reloading their gun.
• Guns Akimbo: Can be done with any of the handguns if you manage to find two of the same kind (even dual-wielded Deagles are possible, though exceedingly unlikely). This doubles your rate of fire and ammo capacity, but also your reload time. M9s in particular are considered practically useless unless dual-wielded. Even then, virtually any other machine gun or dual M93Rs are usually considered a far better option.
  • Normal G18C is a decent short-ranged weapon, but is inferior to the MAC-10 and any of the shotguns. Dual-wielded G18Cs unleash an unrivalled storm of lead that's next to impossible to survive if you get hit by all of it. The downside is that they are highly inaccurate, run dry in about a second, and then require 3 seconds of reloading. If you shot them at a wrong time, you are a sitting duck.
  • OTs-38 is the one gun that does not necessarily benefit much from dual-wielding, being a low fire rate, high accuracy revolver. Sure, you double your available shots from 5 to 10: now, enjoy your 3,5s of reload time, which leave you a sitting duck, especially if you lack a back-up weapon.
• Hand Cannon:
  • The legendary Deagle is one, as well as the Peacemaker revolver in the Desert mode. Fittingly, both of them are limited to their own, specific ammo type that's very hard to come by.
  • The P30L pistol possesses high accuracy, a good rate of fire and 15 ammo - the same amount as an M9, while dealing damage that's closer to Deagle levels.
• Hook Hand: A hook can be found in pirate chests. It does less damage than bare fists, and has awful range, but attacks much faster. It's also the only melee weapon that auto-swings while the fire button is held down, which makes it by far the fastest at opening chests and crates of any kind.
• I Have a Family: The trope is invoked in the clubhouse recording, only to be countered with "So did I."
• Infinity +1 Sword: Certain weapons are considered vastly superior to others in their category. Stronger weapons may exist, but are limited to certain game modes; the following are the best of the best in normal gameplay:
  • The AWM-S, only found very rarely in airdrops, is a sniper rifle that deals 180 damage per shot, making it a guaranteed One-Hit Kill if the target does not have good armor.
  • The M249 is a light machine gun with a great magazine size (100), rate of fire, damage, and accuracy. Its only weaknesses are its reload time and harsh movement penalty while firing. It can be found anywhere weapons spawn, but is excessively rare, not spawning at all in most games.
  • The M249 was later dethroned in the LMG category by the PKP Pecheneg, which has double the ammo capacity and higher damage per shot, albeit with a slightly lower firing rate (the DPS is still slightly higher).
  • The Saiga-12, the rarest shotgun type, boasts a higher firing rate than the M870 and a larger magazine size than the MP220, effectively combining both of their strengths.
  • The strongest melee weapon is the frying pan. Found rarely in airdrop crates, it boasts great range and damage per hit compared to other melee weapons (though its swing rate is slow). However, it is actually most useful when not equipped at all: if you keep it holstered, it acts as a shield for your back, something which no other melee weapon can do.
• Katanas Are Just Better: The Katana is definitely considered the best, or at least one of the best, melee weapons. Even so, it is rarely used outside of bunkers, or in the rare showdowns when the two-three final players survived long enough for the safe zone to shrink to its lowest value.
• Large and in Charge: During the 50-50 mode, each Faction Leader is 25% larger than a normal player, thus becoming clearly visible, but also a better target, becoming more vulnerable to burst-fire weapons and shotgun blasts in particular. They don't get increased health either; just top-tier armor and maximum level of health regeneration. Thus, experienced players will usually resist the temptation to rush the frontline and instead hang back a little, using their guaranteed 8x scope to snipe the enemy players tied up in combat, while remaining unseen, and not staying so far from your team that they cannot revive you should an air strike or a sneak attack occur.
• Lead the Target: All-but-required to win at shootouts at medium range and beyond, as while bullets travel relatively quickly, they are very visible, and are still slow enough to be dodged.
• Luck-Based Mission: While sufficiently skilled players can win under nearly all conditions, luck is still very important. During one round, you may spawn right next to a mansion and be the first one to loot it and get a Deagle by the time the others appear. During the next round, you may end up in a field, open a nearby container, get a scope, and then get shot by another player who just found M870. That's not even accounting the luck inherent in the random loot. Some may open 5+ containers and find no weapons, or just get an M9. Others may immediately find AK-47 or MP220, and then get 4x or 8x scope.
• More Dakka:
  • There are multiple guns that are devoted to fire rate above everything else, like the MAC-10 or G18C. There are also LMGs that fire relatively slowly, but have insane mag sizes, like DP-28 with 60 bullets or M249 with a full 100 bullets.
  • Playing in the 50-50 mode and getting selected as the Lieutenant will give you the "Firepower" perk, which increases the mag size of any weapon you hold by 50%.
• Mighty Glacier: The Tank class in the class-based mode possesses Cast Ironskin perk (30% damage reduction that stacks with one provided by body armor and helmets, while the bullets can be potentially deflected at their shooter) and an Endless Ammo one by default. However, they are also larger than the other classes, and are easier to hit because of it.
• Mutual Kill: Possible, usually due to ricocheting bullets in the bunkers, or careless use of explosives/explosive scenery.
• Pinball Projectile:
  • Bullets will always ricochet from the frying pan, no matter how powerful they are. They'll also ricochet from any metal object: since all the underground bunkers have metal walls, this makes engagements there very dangerous. Players with SMGs may easily end up shooting so many bullets that they both kill their opponent(s) and get finished off by their own ricochet. The shipping docks are less cramped, and allow craftier players to set up complex ricochets to get those hiding behind impenetrable pallets.
  • Even the shipping containers, whose thin metal walls are most definitely not bulletproof in Real Life can in fact ricochet bullets indefinitely. This is a double-edged sword, as while hiding from bullets behind them is a good idea, getting inside one is not, as your opponent's bullets will then ricochet within the container itself, killing you very quickly if they have an automatic weapon of any kind.
  • The oil barrels will ricochet the bullet but still take some damage from it, exploding after a dozen shots or so. Same goes for the stoves, and other exploding items made of metal.
• Pyrrhic Victory: It's possible to kill your last opponent and then die immediately afterwards, whether because your shots hit each other at practically the same time, your enemy's grenade (or, humiliatingly, yours) exploded right after you killed the enemy player, or because you were both fighting in the Red Zone and it took off the last sliver of your health right after winning. The game will still count this as a victory, and play its theme, but also note that there were 0 survivors.
• Random Drop: The airdrops. Some of these will arrive as a result of players activating a flare, but some will just be dropped whenever the transport plane pilot wishes, usually right after a red zone has temporarily stopped expanding, to spice things up.
• Randomly Generated Loot: The locations of all the crates and other loot-bearing items, are fixed, down to every last crate, which are marked on the map (though you'll have no idea when approaching those marks on the map whether they haven't already been broken by other players). Their contents are not, with a few exceptions (i.e. a guaranteed katana in the greenhouse bunker, or a guaranteed Groza-S in the Clubhouse basement vault).
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Played straight during the 50-50 mode, as the players who become team leaders instantly get a very powerful gun (An-94 burst-fire machine gun for Blue leader, Super 90 long-range shotgun for Red one) with a ton of ammo and 8x scope to pick off enemies from long range, a Flare Gun to drop supplies for the allies, machetes for melee, tier 3 armor, helmet and backpack, and adrenaline permanently set to max. Lieutenants get tier 3 equipment along with 4x scopes, powerful M4A1-S weapon, and doubled magazine sizes for all their weapons.
• Regenerating Health:
  • Health regeneration requires adrenaline, which is gained by using soda or pills. During the 50 vs. 50 matches, the two players lucky enough to be chosen as their respective team's leaders get no increased health, but their adrenaline is always at the maximum possible state, letting them move faster and regenerate health quickly.
  • The John Wick-inspired Clubhouse has the steam baths in its basement. Simply standing in the steam will regenerate your health.
• Revolvers Are Just Better:
  • Averted with the OT-38 revolver, which is usually considered the second-worst pistol-type weapon in the game, and either the second- or third-worst weapon in the entire game (depending on one's opinion on the similarly controversial M1100). The few players who got good with M9 and its "shoot as fast as you pull the trigger" fire rate outright consider it the worst weapon.
  • Played straight with the Peacemaker revolver, which has one of the highest DPS in the game. However, it is only available in the Desert mode/Potato mode, and is restricted to the rare .45 ammunition. Even then, Model 84 rifle can often be a safer bet as far as .45 weapons go, simply because of its range and more consistent damage.
• Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...: The March 21, 2019 update, which introduced Japanese-themed Teahouse location and replaced most trees with the blossoming cherry ones, ended with a variation on this in its change log:
  12 gauge is red
  762 is blue
  Omae wa mou shindeiru
• Short-Range Shotgun: Zig-zagged, depending on the shotgun type. The first shotgun type, M870, has an effective range comparable to most pistols and MAC-10: the latter's projectiles still travel longer, but are reduced to stray shots when they get beyond its range. The twin-barreled MP220 is similar in its range. M1100 plays this trope very straight, firing a literal cloud of low-damage flechettes up to four times in quick succession: hard to dodge up close, but is utterly useless at even medium ranges. Saiga-12, however, has both the firing rate and a good ranged accuracy (though the overall range is still pretty short). SPAS-12 is an outright inversion: it has a long barrel and a very tight spread, making it clumsy and easy to circle-strafe up close, but it is surprisingly effective at longer ranges. In the 50-50 mode, Red Leader is awarded a Super 90, which is an outright Sniper Shotgun.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Although most shotguns in the game are short ranged, their sheer power up close makes them very useful. Many players will seek to carry either MP220 in order to instantly end short-range engagements, or the more versatile (though less suited for One-Hit Kill blasts) Saiga-12. The players who got 4/8x scopes may prefer SPAS-12 for long-range engagements due to being both accurate at range and more difficult to dodge than the traditional long-range options like Mosin-Nagant or SV-98 due to its spread.
• Smoke Out: Smoke grenades are quite frequent, and completely obscure anything inside the smoke (as well as removing scope advantages to the players inside the smoke). A popular tactic is to first drop a smoke grenade into a house or another confined place, and then throw a regular one into the smoke, where no-one will notice it until it's too late. The same effect can also be obtained by destroying the fire extinguishers, which are present inside bunkers and in the police station.
• Sniper Pistol: The DEagle 50 has perfect accuracy on its first shot, making it great from a distance.
• Spread Shot: The shotguns' blast. The spread is extremely narrow for SPAS-12, and not very wide for M870 and MP220 either. M1100 however, fires a cloud of lead that's immediately wider in diameter than the actual players.
• Story Breadcrumbs: While nearly every other .io Game suffices with No Plot? No Problem!, the notes in this game's change log drop hints of a larger story, as do certain items and locations. For instance, there's a Hydra Bunker beneath the main island, which has several humans that look identical to the players being stored in tubes, while the change log that introduced it spoke of its role in developing Super Serum. This fuels speculation that the entire island and the Battle Royale taking place there is a way to test out and refine super soldiers. Other bunkers contain audio logs, which seem to reveal that the PARMA corporation in charge of the island was Japanese, and that they cooperated with the Russians, before the latter attacked to claim the island. It's also very strongly implied that a nuclear war has already taken place in the outside world.
• Temporary Online Content: Various temporary modes pop up from time to time, such as Woods mode (map is densely covered in trees, only guns available are shotguns and light machine guns), the Potato mode (there are potatoes all over the island, and destroying them and/or killing a player switches your current weapon to a random one) and 50 vs. 50 (players are assigned to the Red or Blue team and fight to eliminate the other team). Certain weapons can only be found during these events.
• Tree Cover:
  • A tree's shade is semi-transparent, somewhat masking your position, though it's not very effective unless multiple trees are overlapping. Bushes have much higher opacity, making them a lot more effective as a hiding spot, and some types are outright completely opaque.
  • The "One with Nature" perk outright allows those possessing it to move through trees as though they didn't exist, which allows allows them to stand inside the trunk indefinitely, and even shoot from there. This is especially useful for the Scout class in the class mode, who combine this trait with the "Small Arms" one (a straight-up size reduction at no cost), thus making them essentially undetectable inside trees.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Known as a pacifist run, and is possible if you are good at hiding, and also collect enough healing items to survive the Red Zone and/or the second-to-last player until they get finished off by the Red Zone.

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