How to play MethGator.io

You are an alligator. Everything smaller than you is food, and everything bigger than you is a problem. Here is everything the game does not stop to explain.

Controls

Backing up is a third of walking speed and does not turn you around — it is how you get out of a corner or off a wall, not a way to travel.

Your gator turns along an arc rather than pivoting on the spot, so the faster you are moving the wider the turn. Boosting makes you quicker and your turning circle correspondingly bigger — it is for closing distance in a straight line, not for cornering.

Boost is a resource

The boost meter refills very slowly on its own — around fourteen seconds from empty. Eating a grey human refills about a third of it. That is the intended way to get it back: hunt, do not wait.

Run the meter to empty and you enter a cooldown — boost does nothing until the bar is back to roughly a third, which one grey human will do on its own. Spend it on a kill you will actually land, or on an escape you actually need.

Big gators are slow gators

Every segment you grow costs you a little speed, down to a floor of about 62% of base. A leader is the hardest thing on the map to eat and the slowest thing on the map to escape in. If you are small, your speed is the advantage you have — use it to reach humans first rather than to fight.

Who is on the map

Human type is the most important thing on screen. Each one looks different as well as being a different colour, so the distinction still reads if you cannot easily tell one hue from another.

Tanks

Get close to winning and the map answers with a tank. It only shells players who are themselves close to winning, so it is a cost of leading rather than a hazard everyone shares — drop out of contention and it stops caring about you.

A tank does not disappear when the player who summoned it dies. It goes after whoever pulls ahead next. You can destroy one by biting it, which costs you health and is worth points.

Police hunt dealers

Police chase any dealer they can see and arrest it on contact. An arrested dealer is gone, and so are the crystals it was still carrying — so a dealer with police closing on it is a timer, not a target you can come back to.

Both of them drop everything when they see you. A gator outranks the chase for the officer and the dealer alike, which means charging into a pursuit scatters it.

The Kingpin

A Kingpin outruns a boosting gator, so you cannot run one down. What it cannot do is shoot on the move: bracing the shotgun pins it in place for a moment, and that moment is where you make up ground. Chase one that is firing at you; give up on one that is quietly running.

Humans run when you get close, and they run sideways rather than directly away, so charging straight at one tends to miss. Cut the corner.

Fighting other gators

You can only bite another gator from the front. They can hit you from anywhere — your flank and your tail are surface to be bitten, and bullets do not care which way you are facing. Turning to face something is a real defensive move, and letting a gator get alongside you is not.

Eating another player still takes a clear size advantage. Short of that you both bounce and both take damage.

Size

Growing is slow and steady rather than explosive. Getting bigger buys you health, reach and — past a certain length — the ability to smash straight through buildings, which costs health and most of your speed for a moment.

It costs you too. A long gator is slower, and turns more slowly: the arc you carve stays the same relative to your own body, so you can never double back onto your own tail.

Boost is a commitment. Spend two thirds of the meter and you are winded — slower until it refills completely. The bar turns amber while that lasts.

A brief mark appears over a human the moment it notices you. If you see one flash, you have been spotted and that human is already moving.

Scoring

• Crystals are one point each. They are dropped by green humans and scattered by kills.
• Red humans pay a bonus based on how many crystals they had already collected — one point for every four they were carrying.
• Eating grows you. Length is not score, but a longer gator can eat shorter ones.

Winning

A match ends when one of these happens:

• Score race — the first gator to the target score wins. The target is set by whoever made the lobby and is shown on the lobby card before you join.
• Last standing — the last gator alive wins.
• Time — if the clock runs out, the highest score wins.

Water, buildings and other gators

• Water is yours. Gators swim faster than they walk; humans wade slower than they run. Chasing prey into a lake is the single most reliable way to catch it.
• Buildings block everything. Use them to cut off a fleeing human, and to break the line of a bigger gator chasing you.
• Other gators can eat you if they are longer. The game marks nearby players for you: a green fork means you can eat them, a red skull means they can eat you.

Modes

• Quick Play — joins the next public match automatically.
• Solo — you and the AI humans, no rival gators. Good for learning a map.
• Create Public — your own lobby, listed for anyone to join, with your choice of map, score target, time limit and player cap.
• Create Private — the same, but reachable only with the six-character lobby code.

Maps

There are 51 maps: all 50 US states, with Florida in two versions — the default and Everglades Brawl. Outlines are derived from real boundary data, so each state is its own shape, with its own lakes, buildings and proportions. Bigger states are not automatically better — a small map with a high player cap is a brawl, and a large one gives you room to grow before anyone finds you.

Where the idea came from

The game is a nod to Attack of the Meth Gator (2023), a creature feature from The Asylum in which an alligator eats a dumped load of drugs and proceeds to terrorise Florida. That is the whole premise, and it is why the default map is Florida and why the crystals are worth chasing. I salute my wife's love of the bad movie that is so bad that it rounds the bend and becomse good again. This is for you.

MethGator.io is an unofficial fan tribute. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the film or its rights holders.