Pocket Games
Snake
Snake is the game from old Nokia phones, and it has a quirk that sets it apart from every other reflex game: the better you get, the harder it becomes, because the obstacle that kills you is yourself, grown one segment at a time.
The rules
The snake moves on its own and never stops: all you decide is the direction. Every time it eats, it grows by one segment and more food appears elsewhere. The game ends when the head hits a wall or a part of its own body.
Pocket Games has three speeds — Easy, Medium, Hard — each with its own record. The game also speeds up by itself as the snake grows: what feels like a comfortable pace at the start is not one by the middle of the game.
There are also three ways to steer it, chosen in the options:
- Arrows: four directional buttons, the classic.
- Joystick: an analogue stick that returns to centre.
- Swipe: swipe anywhere on the screen.
On a computer you play with the arrow keys. All three are worth trying: with a long snake, where every turn has to land at the exact moment, the difference between schemes is enormous.
How to survive
Move in a serpentine, not a straight line. Heading straight for the food is the most natural way to play, and also the fastest way to end up with your body scattered at random across the screen. High scorers cover the screen in parallel bands: up, one cell across, down, one cell across. The body stays tidy, and tidy means it does not cut you off.
Stay near the walls. The middle feels safe because it has exits in every direction, and it is the trap: a body running through the middle splits the screen in two, and sooner or later it will shut you into the wrong half. A body laid along the walls keeps the field open.
Watch where the tail will be, not where it is. The tail advances as you move: a space occupied now may be free in three moves. That is the reasoning that lets you slip into corridors that look closed. In practice you can always follow your own tail, because it moves out a moment before you arrive.
Do not take the food straight away. If it appears somewhere that would force you through your own body, ignore it for a lap and sort yourself out first. Food does not expire.
Tight turns cost you. Every change of direction leaves a corner, and corners are the places you later cannot get through. For the same route, fewer turns means more free space.
Why you always lose the same way
Nearly every game ends in one of two ways: you hit a wall because a direction came a moment late, or you close yourself inside a loop of your own body. The first is a reflex error and improves with practice; the second is a planning error, and it is what separates fifty points from two hundred.
If the second keeps happening, the fix is not to move faster: it is to stop chasing food diagonally, which the snake cannot do anyway.
Frequently asked questions
Does the snake wrap around the edges?
No: touching an edge ends the game. This is the classic version, where the screen is a closed box.
Can I turn back on myself?
No, you cannot reverse 180 degrees: you would run into your own neck. Turning back takes two turns.
Does the speed increase?
Yes, it grows with the snake’s length up to a limit that depends on the difficulty you chose. On hard the starting pace is already more than double that of easy.
When does a game get difficult?
Around fifty points the snake takes up enough of the screen that every turn has to be decided several moves ahead. From there it stops being a reflex game and becomes a problem of space.
More games to try
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