How to play Snake
Snake has been a staple of casual gaming since its arcade origins in the 1970s and its famous appearance on Nokia phones in the late 1990s. The rules are simple: your snake moves continuously in one direction, and you must steer it toward food while avoiding its own growing tail and the walls of the playing field. Each piece of food increases your length and your score by one.
Tips for your first 30 points
- Hug the edges. Walls cannot kill you on the side you are running along.
- Plan two moves ahead. Do not react to the food; route to it.
- Never reverse. Instinct will try, but the game ignores it for a reason — you would crash into yourself.
Our Snake tips article covers edge-hugging, lawnmower patterns, and how to push past the beginner plateau around a score of 40.
A bit of history
The first Snake-like game was Gremlin's 1976 arcade game Blockade. Snake hit mainstream phones in 1997 when Nokia pre-installed a version on the 6110, and most people in their thirties today learned the game on a monochrome Nokia screen. This browser version uses the same basic mechanics with modern controls.