Snake

How to play Snake

The goal

Eat as much fruit as you can. Each fruit makes the snake one segment longer, so the board gets more crowded the better you do. A run ends when the snake bumps into a wall or its own body. In a maze, it ends happily when you eat the maze’s target number of fruit.

The rules

1. Start. The snake waits until you choose a direction. Any direction works, even backwards: the snake simply turns around.
2. Steer. The snake keeps moving in the direction it faces. You can’t turn straight back on yourself. Two quick turns in a row both count: the second one happens on the next step.
3. Eat. Apples, cherries, pears, strawberries, oranges and grapes are each worth 1 point and add one segment. A new fruit appears on an empty square straight away.
4. Golden stars. With golden stars on, one appears after every fifth fruit. It’s worth 5 points, and the ring around it shows how many of its 25 steps are left.
5. Walls. The edge of the board is a wall: run into it and the run ends. So are the hedges inside a maze and the garden islands.
6. Your own tail. Running into your body ends the run. Moving into the square your tail is just leaving is fine.
7. A perfect run. Fill every open square of the board with snake and you’ve won.

Modes

• Daily Run: the same board, fruit and twist for everyone, on a new garden each day at your local midnight. The twist might be three fruit at once, golden stars, or a few garden islands. One run counts. Starting another game during a daily run uses up that run, with the score you had. Play Endless or the mazes as much as you like afterwards.
• Endless: the classic. Choose the board size, speed, walls, fruit and golden stars when you start a run. They stay the same for the whole run. Your best score is kept for each combination, so a small board at slow speed never competes with a large one at fast.
• Mazes: ten hedged gardens, each with a target (“Eat 12”). Choose a speed and a maze; clear one to unlock the next. Each maze remembers your best score and your quickest clear, in steps.

Starting a run

Press New run and pick the Daily Run, Endless or Mazes. Endless and the mazes ask for a speed: Slow (5 steps a second) gives you the most time to think, Normal is 9 and Fast is 13. On Slow, Endless is at its gentlest.

Controls

• Keyboard: arrow keys or W, A, S and D to steer. Space or P pauses and carries on.
• Touch: swipe anywhere on the board. A short flick is enough, and one gesture can turn twice. You can also use the round arrow pad below the board. Press anywhere in a quarter of the pad, or slide your thumb around it to change direction without lifting. In Settings, choose when the pad shows and whether it sits in the middle or toward your left or right hand.
• Pausing: Space (or P), the game menu, or switching away from the page all pause the run. Nothing moves again until you choose a direction (or tap the board), so you never come back to a crash.

Sharing

When a run ends, Share result shows exactly what will be shared: your length, fruit, golden stars and score, plus the mode. A Daily Run links friends straight to the same day’s garden.

Tips

• Hug the edges early on and keep the middle of the board open for later.
• When the snake is long, move in tidy back-and-forth rows: it’s the safest way to reach fruit without boxing yourself in.
• A golden star can lead you into a corner. Plan the way out before you go for it.

Questions

Do I need an account? No. Your game saves on this device automatically. An optional account adds cloud saves across devices.

What happens if I close the page mid-run? Your run is saved. When you come back it waits, paused, until you choose a direction.