How to Play Snake

Snake is the timeless arcade classic that tests your reflexes, planning skills, and spatial awareness. Guide a growing snake around the screen to collect food while avoiding walls and your own increasingly long tail.

Game Objective

Control a snake that continuously moves across the playing field. Your goal is to collect food items that appear randomly on the screen. Each food item eaten makes your snake grow longer and increases your score. The game ends when the snake collides with the screen boundaries or runs into its own body. The challenge lies in managing your growing length while navigating the shrinking available space.

How to Play

Basic Movement

The snake moves continuously in its current direction at a constant speed. You control only the direction by turning left, right, up, or down. The snake cannot stop moving and cannot reverse directly backward (you can't make a 180-degree turn). Each directional input changes where the snake's head points on its next move.

Collecting Food

Food appears as a colored dot or icon at random locations on the screen. Guide your snake's head to the food's position to eat it. When the snake's head touches food, three things happen: the food disappears, your score increases, and your snake grows one segment longer from its tail. New food immediately spawns at another random location.

Game Over Conditions

The game ends instantly if your snake's head hits any wall or boundary edge of the playing area. Similarly, if your snake's head touches any part of its own body, the game ends. As your snake grows longer, avoiding self-collision becomes increasingly challenging and requires careful path planning.

Controls

• Arrow Keys: Use Up, Down, Left, Right to change snake direction
• WASD Keys: Alternative controls using W (up), A (left), S (down), D (right)
• Swipe Gestures (Mobile): Swipe in the direction you want the snake to turn
• Spacebar: Pause or unpause the game
• New Game Button: Restart with a fresh short snake and reset score

Scoring System

Each food item collected adds points to your score. In most versions, each food is worth the same value, making your score directly proportional to snake length. Some advanced versions include:

• Special food items worth bonus points
• Time bonuses for collecting food quickly
• Multipliers that increase with consecutive collections
• Speed-based scoring where faster gameplay yields higher points

Tips and Strategies

Movement Fundamentals

Center Control Strategy: Try to keep your snake near the center of the screen rather than along the edges. This gives you more directional options and reduces the risk of accidentally hitting a wall when food appears in an awkward position.

Slow, Deliberate Turns: Don't panic and mash direction keys rapidly. Making multiple quick turns can cause you to accidentally reverse into your own body or lose control of your intended path. Plan each turn deliberately, giving yourself time to see the result before your next input.

Space Management

Follow the Walls: One reliable strategy is to move along the perimeter of the screen in a rectangular pattern. This creates a predictable path and naturally keeps your body organized. Only break from the perimeter to collect food, then return to your wall-following pattern.

Create Safe Zones: Mentally divide the screen into sections. Clear out one section at a time by ensuring your snake's body stays organized rather than randomly crossing through the middle. This prevents accidentally trapping yourself with your own body.

Planning Ahead

Look Beyond Current Food: Don't just focus on reaching the current food item. Consider where the next food might appear and position yourself to access it easily. Avoid getting stuck in corners or creating body patterns that will be difficult to navigate once your snake grows longer.

Anticipate Your Tail: Remember that when you eat food, your tail won't move on that turn because your snake grew. This means the space your tail currently occupies will remain blocked one extra turn. Account for this when planning tight maneuvers.

Advanced Techniques

The Spiral Pattern: Create an inward spiral pattern, coiling tighter and tighter as your snake grows. This methodical approach maximizes space efficiency and makes it nearly impossible to accidentally collide with yourself. However, it requires precise timing and becomes difficult at very long lengths.

Tail Chasing: When space gets tight, follow directly behind your tail in a circular or winding pattern. Since your tail moves forward each turn, you're always creating new safe space in front of yourself. This technique allows extended survival with very long snakes.

Quick Escapes: If you find yourself heading toward danger, make a quick 90-degree turn rather than trying to thread through a narrow gap. Conservative direction changes prevent most collision deaths, even if they mean taking a longer route to food.

Difficulty-Specific Strategies

Slow Speed: At slower speeds, you have more time to plan routes and can execute complex patterns like tight spirals. Use this advantage to practice organized movement patterns that will become habits at faster speeds.

Fast Speed: At high speeds, minimize the number of turns you make. Long straight runs are safer than constantly changing direction. Focus on reflexes and pattern recognition rather than complex planning.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Greedy Food Collection: Don't always take the shortest path to food, especially when your snake is long. Sometimes the direct route creates dangerous body configurations that will trap you later. Take the longer, safer path that maintains organized body positioning.

Corner Trapping: Avoid getting stuck in corners where your only exit is blocked by your own body. Always leave yourself an escape route before committing to a direction, especially when collecting food near edges.

Panic Movements: When you realize you're in danger, resist the urge to frantically press multiple direction keys. Panic inputs often lead to immediate self- collision. Instead, calmly assess your options and make one deliberate turn.

Mental Approach

Patience Over Speed: High scores come from survival, not fast food collection. Take your time, especially as your snake grows longer. A slow, methodical approach beats rushed gameplay that ends in collision.

Accept the Inevitable: Eventually, the snake becomes so long that the available space is extremely limited. When you reach this point, focus on maximizing your score rather than trying to survive indefinitely. Stay calm and see how much further you can push your record.