How to play Snake
Controls
On desktop, steer with the arrow keys or WASD; press Space to pause and resume mid-round. On a phone or tablet, use the on-screen D-pad below the board or swipe across the canvas in the direction you want to turn. The snake commits the next move only at the start of the following tick, so queueing two quick taps to corner around yourself is allowed and encouraged.
The objective
Eat the pink apple. Every apple you swallow grows your tail by one segment and bumps your score up by one. The round ends the instant the snake's head runs into a wall or any part of its own body. There's no timer and no level — just see how long a tail you can build before you box yourself into a corner.
Tips
- Hug the perimeter for the first 20 or so apples — it's the easiest way to build a long body without crossing your own path.
- Pause before tight corners. Tapping Space gives you a breath to plan the next two or three moves instead of one.
- Don't reverse. The game ignores a 180° direction change, but trying it still wastes a tick — pre-plan U-turns.
A little history
Snake's lineage goes back to the 1976 arcade game Blockade, but most people first met it on the Nokia 6110 in 1997, where it shipped pre-installed and quickly became one of the most-played games in history purely by accident of distribution. Our version is a faithful single-player descendant — same grid, same rule, same gentle frustration.
Accessibility
The status banner uses an ARIA live region, so screen readers announce game-over and pause. Direction buttons are 44 px tall to meet typical touch targets, and the canvas works without color cues (snake-head and apple are also differently shaped).