Snake

About Snake

Snake is one of the oldest video games still played every day. The idea goes back to the 1976 arcade game Blockade, and it reached hundreds of millions of people when it came preloaded on mobile phones in the late 1990s. This Snake is written from scratch for Kaamko. It runs in your browser with no adverts, no sign-up and nothing sent off your device.

The board is 20 squares by 20. The snake starts three squares long in the middle, heading right. It takes one step every 0.15 seconds at first. Every fruit you eat adds one square to its length and takes 4 milliseconds off each step, until it tops out at one step every 0.06 seconds after 23 fruits. The Speed counter above the board shows how far up that ramp you are. Your best score is kept in this browser only.

How to play Snake

1. Press Start, Space or an arrow key. On a phone, tap Start or swipe on the board.
2. Turn with the arrow keys or W, A, S and D. On a touch screen, swipe in the direction you want to go, or use the four buttons under the board.
3. Steer the head onto the red fruit. The snake grows by one square and a new fruit appears on a free square.
4. The round ends if the head runs into a wall or into any part of the body. Turn on Walls wrap and the snake comes out the opposite side instead of crashing.
5. Press Space, P or Esc to pause. The game also pauses by itself when you switch tabs or lock your phone.

You cannot turn straight back on yourself, so pressing left while going right does nothing. Two quick turns in a row are both remembered, which is how you make a tight U-turn beside your own body without waiting for the next step.

Strategy for long games

Early on, speed matters less than space. The danger in Snake is not the walls but the body you have already laid down, and it only grows. Good players keep the snake moving in long, tidy lanes, usually back and forth along the edges, so the open part of the board stays in one piece. If the free space splits into two pockets and the fruit lands in the smaller one, you can trap yourself.

A safe habit is to follow your own tail. The square your tail is on right now will be empty by the time your head gets there, so a path that trails the tail can never close. When the snake is long, zig-zag in wide rows across the whole board rather than chasing each fruit by the shortest route. It is slower per fruit but it keeps every square reachable, and at top speed that is what keeps a round alive.