The Hole That Ate the City — Could You Beat It?
You're a hole in the ground with an appetite for a whole city. How much can you swallow?
The premise is refreshingly simple: you are a hole, the city is your buffet, and everything from park benches to office towers is on the menu the moment you grow big enough. The only catch is knowing what counts as big enough, and knowing exactly when.
Swallow too greedily too early and you will choke on a bus you had no business attempting. Swallow smart, small things first, patience second, timing third, and the entire downtown vanishes into you like it was never there. These questions test your appetite and your strategy in equal measure. Eat well, dodge the bigger holes, and try to leave at least the sidewalk behind.
Read every possible result and what it means →
Inspect the scoring, question by question
The highest possible score here is 21. The original game divides scores into 4 bands; the bands contain different numbers of answer combinations. A high point total is not a measured percentile.
1. You start out roughly the size of a manhole cover. Which of these can you actually swallow right now?
- A parked city bus — 1 original points
- A soda can and a small trash bin — 3 original points
- A tall streetlight — 2 original points
- The entire town square — 0 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
2. To grow as fast as possible in the opening seconds, you should go for...
- One giant building right away — 1 original points
- Nothing yet; wait for a bonus timer — 0 original points
- Lots of small, easy objects back to back — 3 original points
- Only mid-size cars, skipping everything else — 2 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
3. You are big enough for cars now, and a rival hole slightly larger than you starts drifting your way. Smartest move?
- Charge straight at the rival hole — 1 original points
- Sit still and hope it drifts away — 0 original points
- Trail right behind it, grabbing the leftovers — 2 original points
- Feed on nearby small stuff to grow, then steer clear of it — 3 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
4. At mid-size, put these in order from easiest to hardest for you to swallow: fire hydrant, bus, skyscraper, bench.
- Skyscraper, bus, fire hydrant, bench — 0 original points
- Bench, fire hydrant, bus, skyscraper — 3 original points
- Fire hydrant, bench, skyscraper, bus — 1 original points
- Bus, bench, fire hydrant, skyscraper — 2 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
5. A huge object teeters half over your edge, but you are still a bit too small for it. What happens?
- It falls in anyway; size doesn't matter — 1 original points
- You shrink from the strain — 0 original points
- It won't drop until you have grown bigger — 3 original points
- It falls but slows you down for a moment — 2 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
6. Ten seconds left on the clock and you are enormous. Where do those final seconds go?
- The biggest single thing you can still fit — 3 original points
- Scattered tiny scraps over in the corner — 1 original points
- Standing still to protect the size you have — 0 original points
- A medium cluster you can clear quickly — 2 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
7. When you are up against a bigger hole, what is the one thing that actually ends your run?
- Eating too many small things — 0 original points
- Growing too fast, too soon — 1 original points
- Drifting close enough for the bigger hole to swallow you — 3 original points
- Lingering near the edges of the map — 2 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
What happens across every possible answer pattern?
We counted all 16,384 patterns, treating each offered choice as equally likely. This is a synthetic rule check, not visitor research. It does not describe how real people answer.
| Result | Patterns | Share of patterns |
|---|---|---|
| Swallowed a Bench, Then a Bus Swallowed You | 323 | 1.97% |
| Decent Appetite | 7,869 | 48.03% |
| Downtown Demolisher | 7,456 | 45.51% |
| Devoured the Whole Downtown | 736 | 4.49% |
Download the full counts · Download Python script · Download rule inputs
To reproduce locally: python3 measure_legacy.py --input legacy-rule-inputs.json --output counts.json. Uses Python 3 and its standard library.
The family tree of games where you eat the map
Games built around growing by absorbing things have a clearer lineage than you might expect. Katamari Damacy, released by Namco in 2004 and designed by Keita Takahashi, gave players a sticky ball and one rule: anything smaller than the ball clings to it, and every new clump raises the ceiling on what counts as smaller. Thumbtacks give way to bicycles, bicycles to cows, cows to buildings, and the joke lands because the rule never changes while the scale runs away with itself.
Agar.io carried the same idea into a browser window in 2015, rendered as plain circles drifting across a grid, and its popularity set off a run of imitators that adopted the .io suffix as shorthand for the format. A hole quietly swallowing a city is that skeleton in another costume. One verb, repeated, with the world reclassified underneath you every few seconds.
Runaway growth, and the brakes bolted on afterwards
What grips is that the payoff is not a number ticking upward but a change in what the world will permit. A bus you could previously only nudge becomes a bus you can eat, and the map reorganises itself into fresh targets without redrawing a single pixel. Systems designers call this a positive feedback loop, because each success makes the next one cheaper.
Left unchecked it also produces a runaway leader and a very dull final minute, which is why the genre bolts on brakes: a countdown, rivals who can consume you back, and objects that refuse to budge until you cross a threshold. The clock, rather than the city, is usually the real opponent.
Why greed loses, and what a verdict is actually worth
Starting small is arithmetic rather than timidity. Ten benches taken in one smooth line convert into size immediately, while a skyscraper you cannot yet fit costs you seconds of hovering with nothing to show for them. Hesitation is expensive in any mode where every second spent not eating is growth you never get back, and that is the calculation these games quietly train you to run without noticing.
Worth saying plainly, though: seven questions cannot measure how anyone behaves with half a second, a swinging camera and a rival closing in. What a verdict like this is good for is the argument afterwards, when the friend who claims to be the patient strategist is invited to prove it.
Reading context & limits
For background and a fuller source trail, read How Game Difficulty Actually Works. These references provide context; they do not validate the entertainment result or every historical detail in the archived essay.
- Flow — APA Dictionary of Psychology
- Robin Hunicke, "The Case for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in Games" (ACE '05) — ACM Digital Library
Content lead: LISA. Updated October 25, 2026. Send a specific factual correction.