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Snake

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Awards for Snake

  • Long snake Grow the snake to twenty-five segments. —

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About Snake

Updated 21 Sept 2026

Eat, grow, and try not to trap yourself.

Snake predates the phone it made famous. It was on mainframes in the seventies and in three million Nokia handsets by 1998, and the rules never needed to change.

There is no level design and no enemy. The only thing standing between you and a perfect score is the length of your own tail.

Also searched for as

  • snake game
  • play snake
  • classic snake
  • snake online

Whichever name you know it by, it is the same game: it runs in this browser, with no download and no sign-up.

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Tell us and we will check it against the published rules.

How to play Snake

5 steps
  1. Steer the snake with the arrow keys, WASD, a swipe, or the on-screen pad. It never stops moving.
  2. Eat the red dot. Every one you take adds a segment to your tail and ten points to your score.
  3. The longer you get, the faster the snake moves — the difficulty comes from your own length, not from anything the game adds.
  4. Hitting a wall ends the game — unless you switch the edges to Wrap, Leave one edge of the field and you come back in at the opposite one. which sends you out one side and in the other. Running into your own tail always ends it.
  5. You can follow your own tail into the square it is about to leave. That is legal, and it is how the tightest turns are made.

Strategy that actually helps

5 tips
  • Use the edges, not the middle. Circling the perimeter keeps the open space in one connected piece, while cutting across the centre splits the board into two halves you have to survive separately.
  • Never make a turn that closes a loop around empty space. Anything you fence off is space you cannot get back, and it is the most common way a long snake dies with the board half empty.
  • Plan your exit before you take the food, not after. Grabbing a dot in a corner with no way out is a death you committed to three moves earlier.
  • When you are long, follow your own tail. The square directly behind your tail is always safe, so trailing yourself in a spiral buys unlimited time to think.
  • Turn early rather than late. At the higher speeds you cannot react at the wall — the input has to be queued before you get there.

Controls

Mouse, keyboard, touch

Mouse and keyboard

  • Arrow keys or WASD to steer.
  • Space to pause and resume. The game also pauses by itself when you switch tabs.
  • The game starts on your first key press, and any direction key starts a new one after game over.

Touch

  • Swipe anywhere on the board in the direction you want to turn.
  • Or use the arrow pad below the board.
  • Tap the pause button to stop; swipe or tap the board to resume.

Questions

5 answered

How do I play snake on a phone?
Swipe anywhere on the board in the direction you want to turn, or use the arrow pad underneath it. Both work, and the board is sized to fit your screen without scrolling.

Why does it get faster?
The speed is tied to your length. The snake starts at one move every 160 milliseconds, each segment you grow takes 3 milliseconds off that, and it never goes below 70 milliseconds — about fourteen moves a second, which is fast but playable. A long snake is fast because it is long, which is the whole difficulty curve.

Why did my quick double turn not kill me?
Turns are queued, two deep, and applied one per move. Pressing up then left in the gap between two moves turns the snake up and then left on the following move, instead of folding it back into its own neck. The queue is what makes tight corners possible at speed.

Can I hit my own tail?
Yes, and it ends the game. The one exception is the very last segment: it is about to move on, so following your own tail is safe and is how experienced players survive at full length.

Does my best score save?
Your best is kept in your own browser, on that device. There are no accounts, and clearing your browser data clears it.