Since then, usually around Halloween, there have been reports of strange glitches on the official servers. And occasionally someone reputable will swear that they found the secret level... but somehow video records always fail.
In 2023, I started the first custom slither.io servers. I vaguely recall someone asking if I could re-create the Secret Level. I came up with a plain old world with server bots, slapped on an exit with a tunnel, put in a few dead snakes in the "secret level", and a big giant snake at the end. That was it.
But then things started happening with that server. Things that I did not program. Like the bots... they just started trying to wrap players. And some strange bot names. And strange... activity.
The 2026 Haunted Server is so much more than it once was. The Secret Level has expanded a lot, there is a lot more in the normal playing area, and there are interactions... and scoring added just in time for Halloween. It is chock full of references to slither.io and custom server history.
An early version of the 2026 Haunted Server recorded by Ranker Hunter has over 5 million views on TikTok (compared to 8.4 million views of the original Don't Turn Around YouTube video!
Parts of it are like the dreamlike images that the gamer had in his final days. Some are how he remembered things, a bit different than they actually were. And part of me is in there, too: kind of like what a slither.io dream of mine might be like. And there are things that I added for fun, lots of things that are just a bit too different from regular slither.io that they might seem a bit spooky. And yes, a lot of things that are there are things that I didn't add (or at least not intentionally).
Most of my custom worlds got copied with some tweaks. The botstorm world was copied within a month after I gave out my code, which is understandable. The Battledome has been copied several times now, which is disappointing (is "Hey, I have a new BD based on Challenge Me!'s" so hard to say?). And even the Art World ("Canvas"/"Drawing"). Team Battledome. Looking at the NTL list of 22 custom servers right now, without even having to play on them, I can see 16 using features I invented, and another 5 using data sourced from me. I guess immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
BUT, the Haunted Server? As the bot says, "Clone This Server, LOL".
I love a challenge, hence my IGN. This server incorporates many ideas I or others have had, often without having any clue if they would work or not. It's something I'm quite proud of.
Why is this my final work? We are now at a point where custom servers are being created with AI, it no longer requires investing months of intensive research (or access to such notes). More and more machine learning bots... just because it is easy to do. People are creating hacks that make it possible for players not to lose in situations where they otherwise would. And finally: the community (as a whole) doesn't care. I'll wake up to over 1,000 posts (each averaging about 3-5 words) in the slither.io discord server about people's favorite foods and animals, making it impossible for people who want to seriously discuss slither.io to do so. People don't care how the sausage is made if they get to play their BD! But when I saw the Terms of Service change to disallow custom servers, I chose to respect the owner's wishes, not find ways to justify seeing what I can get away with. slither.io is perfect. </rant>.
The American flag bot names are references to years that slither.io has been around. In the center, the bots will have names related to current events/trends/memes, whereas bots closer to the border will have ones from around the time the first server became haunted (think for a second how snakes that move could have names based on their location in the server).
In the Secret Level, you'll find pieces of the imagined slither.io "Master Control Server" that monitors all the slither.io servers. At the top of the beginning of the Secret Level, you'll find a real-time giant map of the entire server. At the bottom of the secret level is a world map showing where the servers are and their status (with a snake.io clone showing a single failed server, representing how snake.io was apparently AI-only for many years). On the right is a list of the servers (not updated in real time; I never got around to that).
As you enter the Secret Level, you'll see "Brooklyn! (No Sleep Till)". There was a bot "No Sleep Till Brooklyn!" years ago that a discord moderator thought was intended to be somehow demeaning to someone running a custom server in New Jersey (they also thought that "Testing... 1 2 3000!" was me secretly admitting to that a server with 12,000 bots really only had 3,000).
Below that, you'll see a dream-like formula that results in the number 47, representing the huge amount of work that it took to determine that the official servers would update every 47ms (that some people had troubles beleiving). And next to it is a scan of a literal "back of the envelope" drawing of the old Secret Level, an idea for an new one with more room, and the way it actually became.
There are two numbers in the bottom right corner: 269.64' (perfect) and 270.00'. That is a nod to Hypah and the way the protocol communicates the angle. I changed the angle of that tunnel that *looks* like 270 degrees to be 269.64 degrees... which actually helps make defeating the final snake slightly easier. Just one of the many, many amazing mathematical constructs in slither.io.
There are also references to SUPER. This goes back to the "drama" of the two groups running custom servers starting at the end of December, 2023 going on for about 6 months. To show superiority, "SUPER" was added to the name of one of the Battledomes, with the high score showing in NTL as 1,000,000 rather than 50,000 (20x better?). I am not proud of some of what I did to contribute to the drama back then.
The Battledome is an extension of the drama. It represents those who chose to publicly insert themselves into the drama. Here they are in a bitter battle, fighting fiercely as if their lives depended on it... with nobody ever winning, and nobody outside the Battledome caring (except perhaps to watch the spectactle and gossip about it).
At the top of the Battledome on the right are the names of the slither.io players that I am aware of who have died over the years. Above the Battledome are a maze (with Buns forever going through the maze; he was the first to solve the original), and a mini "Spiral Bots" world with bots magically going both directions (the fast ones might even have your IGN!). And of the right, a nod to the Art World with a Japanese "ABCs" song that someone painstakingly created in there.
Then a final blockade with warnings trying to urge you not to go ahead and face the big snake. The final 2 blockade names reference the crime I was falsely publicly accused of. That defamation was the final straw that led me to leave the slither.io discord and shut down the Snakey Monster project, so I felt it was fitting having that reference just before the end of the Haunted Server world.