Snake

Classic Snake — eat food, grow longer, don’t hit yourself. Highest score wins.

How to play Snake

Snake is one of the oldest arcade games — and still one of the best. You control a growing snake on a grid. Eat the red food to grow longer and score points. Don’t bite your own tail, and on the harder modes, don’t crash into a wall. The bigger you grow, the harder it gets to avoid yourself.

Controls

Arrow keys (or W / A / S / D) — turn the snake’s head.
Swipe on touch devices — drag inside the play area in the direction you want to turn.
On-screen D-pad — tap the arrow buttons below the board.
The snake will not let you make a 180° turn directly into yourself — that’s a safety against accidental self-collision.
Snake button at the top — start a new game on the current difficulty.

Scoring

Every piece of food is worth 10 points and adds one segment to your tail.
The leaderboard tracks highest score, so longer survival with more food eaten wins.
The timer doesn’t matter — there’s no penalty for playing carefully. Speed only matters because the snake moves automatically and won’t wait for you to plan.

Difficulty levels

Easy — 15×15 board, slow tick, walls wrap around. Forgiving for beginners — you can’t lose to a wall, only to yourself.
Medium — 20×20 board, faster tick, walls kill on contact. The classic arcade experience.
Hard — 25×25 board, fast tick, walls kill. Long runs are possible but require constant planning ahead.

Strategy tips

Plan the next 2-3 turns, not just the next one. The snake moves on a fixed timer; you can’t pause to think.
Stay near the edges early. When the snake is short, hugging the perimeter leaves the open middle for later, when you’ll need it.
Don’t chase food directly. Sometimes it’s safer to loop once and approach from a safer angle.
On Easy, use wrap-around. Driving off one edge and re-entering on the opposite side is often the fastest path.
On Hard, keep a long “escape corridor” behind your head. If you ever find yourself with no room to turn into, you’re done.

From arcade cabinet to every pocket

The snake concept goes all the way back to the 1976 arcade game “Blockade,” where two players drove growing trails and tried to outlast each other. The single-player version most people know became a worldwide phenomenon in 1998, when Nokia preloaded a tiny black-and-white Snake on its mobile phones. Suddenly hundreds of millions of people had a game in their pocket at all times, and Snake became one of the most-played video games in history almost by accident.

Its genius is that the difficulty comes entirely from your own success. The longer you survive, the longer your tail grows, and the harder it becomes to avoid running into yourself. There is no level design to memorise — just you, slowly running out of room.

Surviving a long run

Think in paths, not steps. Before you eat a piece of food, make sure you can still reach open space afterwards. A trapped head is a lost game.
Use a boustrophedon (back-and-forth) pattern. Sweeping the board in tidy rows, like ploughing a field, keeps your tail organised and leaves predictable gaps to slip through.
Keep to the walls when long. Hugging the perimeter and filling the board in a spiral leaves the centre free for manoeuvring late in a run.
On Easy, abuse wrap-around. Since the walls pass you to the opposite side, you can take shortcuts off the edges — but remember your tail wraps too.
Leave yourself an exit. Always keep at least one clear route behind your head. The moment you have no square to turn into, it is over.

Frequently asked questions

How do you score in Snake?

Each piece of food is worth 10 points and adds one segment to your tail. The leaderboard tracks your highest score, so it rewards long, careful runs rather than fast ones.

What is the difference between the difficulties?

Easy uses a small board, a slow tick, and walls that wrap around, so you can only ever lose to your own tail. Medium and Hard use bigger boards, faster movement, and solid walls that end the run on contact.

Why can’t I reverse direction?

The game blocks an instant 180° turn into your own neck — it would be an automatic self-collision. To double back, turn twice in quick succession instead.

Is there a maximum length?

In theory you win by filling the entire board with your tail, leaving no room for new food. In practice almost everyone runs out of safe space long before that — which is exactly the challenge.

Offline play

Once this page is loaded, everything runs in your browser — no servers, no internet needed. Your best score is stored on your device and uploaded to the leaderboard the next time you reconnect (only if you’re logged in — guests play for fun and their scores stay local).