Snake games

Snake games, free in your browser, on a computer or a phone. Nothing to download and no account to create: open one and the snake is waiting for your first move.

One idea, fifty years old

The idea is older than home computers. A line moves across the screen on its own, you choose where it turns, and it must never run into a wall or into itself. The first arcade version appeared in 1976, and since then the same rule has been rebuilt on almost every screen that could draw a moving line: arcade cabinets, home computers, calculators, mobile phones and now the browser.

What made it last is how little it asks and how much it gives back. There is one control, a direction. There is one goal, to grow. And the game gets harder on its own, because every apple you eat makes the snake longer, and a longer snake has less room to move in the same space. Nobody has to design a harder level: you build it yourself, one apple at a time.

Playing here

• Snake is the classic: a 17 by 17 board, an apple that is always somewhere on it, and a snake that speeds up with every piece it grows. Every fifth apple brings a star worth more the sooner you reach it. It plays with the arrow keys, with swipes, or with an arrow pad under the board on a phone held upright.
• Snake Arena moves the same idea off the grid and into a round arena shared with twelve snakes driven by the computer. Eat to grow, boost to cut the others off, and collect the food a snake leaves behind when it runs into you. Your own body is safe; theirs is not.

Every game in this category pauses by itself when you switch tabs, so a message never costs you a run, and your best score is kept in your browser.

Getting better at snake

The first minutes are about reflexes; after that the game is about space. The two habits that separate a short run from a long one are the same in every version of the game. Keep the open part of the board in one piece, so that a long body never walls you into a corner. And remember that your tail is always leaving: the cell it is on now is free on the very next step, so following it closely is the safest thing a long snake can do.

Each game page sets out the full rules, the scoring and a few tips, so it is worth a look before your first run.