Agar.io is the new House of Cards gaming star

Fictional US president Frank Underwood’s latest gaming darling is another indie hit.

In the early series of Netflix hit House of Cards, the then presidential hopeful was a big Call of Duty player and in one episode openly coveted a PlayStation Vita. In the third series, Ustwo’s mobile puzzle title Monument Valley made a surprise, high-profile appearance. And Underwood recruited a video games journalist to write a book about him.

For the fourth series, which debuted last week, it’s Agar.io that has stepped into the limelight.

Not heard of it? The game has been a big success, thanks to no small part to the attention given to it by PewDiePie. The online title actually ranked fifth in YouTube’s 2015 most popular games list.

We received a call from the House of Cards production team, out of the blue,” Miniclip community manager Sam Smith told Kotaku. They already knew about the game and wanted to include it in the show, and naturally we were delighted to be a part of it.

When we learned that House of Cards wanted to include the game in the show, we were blown away. Agar.io has been incredibly popular since it launched last year, and this latest news really underlines it as a cultural phenomenon.

We worked closely with the HoC production team: we made a special build of the game that had the Obama skins taken out so that it better fit the HoC universe. The game joins a very prestigious club of titles that have been played by Frank Underwood – we hope this will lead to plenty of new fans discovering Agar.io and joining the millions around the world that already play and love it.”

Here’s the Agar.io clip: