Snake

Tips for Snake

Snake is about space more than speed. Every orange dot makes you longer, and the board does not grow with you, so the best players keep the snake in tidy loops along the edges and leave the middle open. Turn early rather than late: once the pace picks up, a turn you leave until the last square is the one that sends you into a wall.

The gold star appears after every fifth bite and is worth five dots, but it only stays for a few seconds. Go for it when the path is clear and let it go when reaching it means cutting across your own tail. A long, safe run beats one greedy star, and when it does end, Space starts the next one at once.

How to play Snake

In Snake you steer a snake around a closed board and try to make it as long as you can. The run starts as soon as you press Play, with the snake already moving. It never stops, so the only thing you control is which way it turns.

Orange dots appear on the board. Steer the head of the snake onto a dot to eat it: you score 10 points and the snake grows longer. After every fifth bite a gold star appears as well. It is worth 50 points, but it only stays for a few seconds, so you have to decide quickly whether it is within reach. The pace picks up the longer you survive, which leaves you less time to plan each turn just as the snake is filling more of the board.

The run ends the moment the head hits a wall or any part of the tail. Your score is the points you collected on the way, and your best score is saved in the browser you play in, so every new run is a try at beating it. On a computer you steer with the arrow keys or WASD, P pauses, M mutes and Space starts the next run at once. On a phone or tablet you swipe in the direction you want to go, or use the on-screen pad.

About Snake

Snake is one of the best-known video game ideas there is: a line that moves on its own, grows every time it eats and must never run into itself. It started out as a simple arcade and computer game and became famous on mobile phones, where a great many people played it for the first time. The rules have hardly changed since, because they do not need to.

Kiloo's Snake keeps those rules and gives them a clean look, with a glowing board, orange dots to eat and gold stars as a short-lived bonus. It opens straight in the browser on a computer, tablet or phone with nothing to install, and a run lasts anything from a few seconds to several minutes, which makes it a good fit for a short break. It suits anyone who likes simple rules with a steady rise in difficulty, from children learning to plan a few moves ahead to players chasing a higher best score. The board stays the same size while the snake gets longer and faster, so no two runs play out quite the same way.

Frequently asked questions