Arcade

ASCII Snake

Steer a growing snake around a walled grid, eating food and avoiding your own tail.

Loading Snake...

Every game plays locally in your browser. Nothing about your play is uploaded to a server. Your high scores are kept in this browser on this device only, and you can clear anything these games have saved from the privacy page.

Controls

Arrow keys or WASDTurn the snake up, down, left or right.
SwipeTurn the snake, on a touch screen.
PPause and resume.
R or EnterStart a new game.

How to play

  1. Press R or Enter, or tap the board, to start. The snake begins moving on its own.
  2. Steer with the arrow keys, WASD, or a swipe. The snake cannot turn back on itself.
  3. Drive the head over each piece of food. Every piece grows the snake by one segment and speeds it up a little.
  4. Avoid the walls and your own tail. Hitting either ends the game; your score is the number of pieces eaten.

About Snake

Snake is the game that shipped on a generation of phones, and it survives because the rule is a single sentence: the snake never stops, you only steer it. Every piece of food makes the snake one segment longer, which makes the next piece harder to reach without crossing the trail you have already laid down. The difficulty is entirely self-inflicted, and that is what makes a long game feel earned.

This version runs as text on a fixed grid, so what you see is exactly the state the game is reasoning about - there is no hidden pixel precision to blame. The snake speeds up as it grows, the walls are solid, and the only way to lose is to run into the wall or into yourself. Your longest run is saved on this device so you always have a number to beat.

Frequently asked questions

Swipe on the board in the direction you want the snake to turn, or use the on-screen arrow pad below it. Both do the same thing as the arrow keys on a keyboard.

A snake moving right cannot immediately turn left, because its head would collide with the segment right behind it. The game ignores a reversal so that a mistaken double-tap does not end your run. Turn through up or down instead.

No. Your high score is saved in your browser on this device only, using local storage. There is no account, no server and no leaderboard - the game never sends anything about your play off your machine.

While you are here

BNS Data Tools

The same team builds a set of free, privacy-first data and developer utilities - formatters, converters, validators and calculators - that run in your browser the same way these games do.

Open BNS Data Tools