An old idea that gets harder as you win
Snake is one of the oldest ideas in arcade games: a line that keeps moving and grows every time it eats. Its twist is that success creates the danger. Every apple makes your body longer, and your body is the main thing on the board that can end the run. On top of that, each apple here makes every step 2.5 percent quicker, until the snake moves at its top pace about twenty apples in.
So a run has two phases. Early on, speed is the threat and the board is wide open. Later, the speed holds steady and space becomes the threat. Good players switch their thinking as they cross from one phase to the other.
The first twenty apples
You start three squares long, heading right, with plenty of room. This is the time to be direct.
- Take the short route. With a tiny body, the straight line to the apple is almost always safe. Wasting moves here only adds risk later.
- Turn early, not late. The snake keeps moving whether you press or not. Make each turn a square before you need it rather than at the last moment.
- Stay off the walls when you can. Hitting an edge ends the run just like hitting yourself. A turn into a wall from the outer row has only one safe answer, so give yourself two.
Laps for the long game
Once the snake is long, stop thinking about the apple and start thinking about where your tail will be. The squares your body covers now will be free again as the snake moves on, as long as you don't cut across them.
The safest pattern is a sweep. Run the full width of the board, step down one row, run back, and repeat, keeping one edge column clear as your road home. The body then lies in neat parallel lanes behind you, and the head always has open rows ahead. It's slow, because you pass the apple by sometimes, but it rarely traps you. When the apple lands on your path, you eat it for free. When it doesn't, finish the lap and catch it next time around.
Here's the kind of moment the sweep prevents. Say the apple appears in a pocket, three squares deep, with your own body forming both walls. Going in is safe only if the body lining that pocket will move out of the way before your head needs to turn around. Count it. If the body piece at the mouth of the pocket is many squares from your tail, it will still be there when you try to leave, and the run is over. When in doubt, skip the pocket and come back on the next lap.
The mistakes that end most runs
- Boxing yourself in. The classic loss is a spiral inward: each turn feels fine, but the open area shrinks until there's no way out. Keep the open space in one big piece, not split into pockets.
- Turning through a gap too narrow to come back. A one-square gap between your body and a wall is a corridor with no room to turn. Enter one only if you can see the exit.
- Reacting to the apple instead of the board. A new apple appears in a random free square. Pause the urge to dive for it, and take a second to see whether the path there leaves you a way out.
Picking a board and practising
The three difficulties change two things at once. Easy is a 15 by 15 board at a slow starting pace. Medium is 20 by 20 and quicker. Hard is 25 by 25 and quickest of all. Bigger isn't easier: the extra room helps late in the run, but the faster speed punishes slow reactions from the very first apple.
Start on Easy to learn the sweep, since the small board shows you quickly what happens when you box yourself in. Move up to Medium when you can fill a good part of the board without a crash. On Hard, the first twenty apples are the real test, so practise clean early turns. Each apple is worth 10 points, so your score is ten times the apples eaten. To beat your best, play more carefully, not faster.
