About Snake
Snake is a game of steering and planning: you guide a growing snake around a walled 20 by 20 grid, eating apples while keeping clear of the walls and your own body. Every apple makes the snake one segment longer and a little quicker, so the board gets more crowded and the game gets tenser the better you do.
How to play
- The snake starts three segments long in the middle of the board, facing right, and does not move until you give it a direction.
- Each apple you eat adds one segment and one point to your score. A new apple appears on a random empty square.
- Running into any of the four walls ends the game. There is no wrap-around to the other side.
- Running into your own body ends the game. You can, however, move into the square your tail is just leaving.
- You cannot reverse straight back on yourself; a press in the opposite direction is ignored.
- The snake speeds up with every apple: it starts at about 7.5 moves per second and keeps quickening until it reaches its top speed of roughly 16 moves per second at 37 apples.
Controls
- Keyboard: arrow keys or W, A, S, D to turn. The first press (any direction except left) starts the game.
- Touch: swipe up, down, left or right on the board. Very short swipes are ignored so taps do not turn you by accident.
- Turns are buffered: you can queue up to three quick presses and the snake will take them in order, one per square.
Tips and strategy
- Keep to the edges early on. Circling the outside of the board leaves the centre open, which gives you room to manoeuvre once the snake is long.
- Use the turn buffer for tight U-turns. Pressing up then left in quick succession will make a clean two-square turn even at high speed.
- Think one apple ahead. Before you dive towards an apple, check that you will have a way out once you have eaten it.
- Avoid boxing yourself into a pocket of the board with only one exit, because your own body will close it behind you.
- Remember that the square your tail occupies is free on the next move. Following your tail closely is a safe way to stall while the apple position works out.
- Since the speed caps at 37 apples, the late game does not get any faster; it only gets more crowded, so careful routing matters more than reflexes.
Background
The idea of steering a line that grows behind you goes back to the 1976 arcade game Blockade by Gremlin Industries, in which two players tried to trap each other. Many home computer versions followed in the late 1970s and 1980s, and the single-player variant where you eat food to grow became hugely familiar in the late 1990s when it was preloaded on Nokia mobile phones. The simple rules and the way difficulty comes from your own success have made it one of the most widely cloned game designs.
Questions
- Does the snake get faster?
- Yes. The move interval shortens slightly with every apple you eat, from about 0.13 seconds per square at the start to a minimum of 0.06 seconds once you have eaten 37 apples. After that the speed stays the same.
- Why won't the game start when I press left?
- The snake starts facing right, and reversing into your own body is not allowed, so a left press is ignored. Press up, down or right to begin.
- Where is my best score saved?
- Your best apple count is stored in your browser's local storage on this device. It is not uploaded anywhere, so clearing site data or switching browsers resets it.