The story of the snake game
First steps: playing the snake game
Every classic snake tale opens the same way: apples appear here and there, and your snake sets out to gobble them up. With every bite its body gains a segment and your score climbs higher. Yet the road has its perils: hit a wall, or let your snake catch its own tail in its jaws, and your journey ends there; the longer the snake, the wiser each turn must be.
Your fruit comes first: apple, strawberry, cherry, orange, banana, watermelon, grapes or pear, picked before each classic game. Then the journey is yours to steer, using WASD or the arrow keys on a computer, and on phone and tablet alike with swipes toward your heading or the arrows on screen.
Snake game wisdom for the road
Wise travellers don't rush at every apple. Stay near the walls, glide in long, steady stretches and, before turning, make sure an escape stays open, since a snake wound around itself is trapped for good. As it grows longer, sweep across the board one row after another, with the tail trailing safely in your wake.
Your first steps belong to the small board and the calm speed; venture further when you feel bold. The challenge modes redraw the map: no borders lets you leave by one side and return by the opposite one, bricks and poison clutter your path, portals fling you across the board and speed-up quickens the snake with each fruit. The game records a best score for each pairing of mode, speed and board size.
Garden
Cave
Old Mill
Sky Islands
Volcano
The shape of a level
Picture each level as a little side-view garden that hides a burrow somewhere inside. You lead the worm onward a single cell with each move, its body following behind the head. The quest is plain: guide that head home to the burrow.
Gravity is the twist in this tale. With no ground, stone or fruit beneath any part of it, the whole worm drops. A fruit under you serves as a footbridge until it is eaten. A gap that is too wide while the worm is short shrinks to nothing once it has eaten another apple, and a deep pit where a long worm would be caught can be the single way onward for a smaller one.
A journey through five worlds of twelve levels
The road sets out from the Garden: here the worm's first lessons are how to crawl, how to eat and how to fall. Deeper in, the Cave offers stones worth pushing and spikes that wound the worm yet bear a stone with ease. In the Old Mill, any cracked block shatters as you move off it, and a gate stays open only while its button is held down by something.
Higher up, a glowing berry on the Sky Islands turns gravity's pull around and has the worm strolling on the ceiling; mushrooms, meanwhile, shrink it once more. Last comes the Volcano, where coloured keys each unlock all locks in their colour, woven together with every trick from the worlds before. Each world opens its gates once enough levels of the previous one lie behind you.
A daily gift, stars and golden seeds
Each level can reward you with as many as three stars, and a short route to the burrow claims all three. Hidden in all 60 levels, usually just aside from the route that seems obvious, a golden seed lies waiting. Coins flow from finished levels, from achievements and from the gift waiting each day, while 25 achievements line the road.
Classic snake mode and its challenges
In classic mode, the snake game of old returns, the one you know by heart: eat, grow, and never let your teeth near your tail. Before setting off, eight fruits are yours to pick from, grapes, a watermelon, a strawberry or an apple, for instance. With the board kept small and the speed calm, younger players find it a gentle road.
For those hungry for a bigger quest, challenges bring eight rule sets: classic, no borders, bricks, portals, poison, flip-flop, speed-up and keys. Each can be tackled on boards of small, medium or large size, at calm, normal or fast speed, and the game will remember your top score in every pairing.
Your worm, your hero
Coins earned on your travels unlock fresh outfits at the shop. Take the road as Wiggo the worm, a caterpillar, a snake, a dragon or a robo-worm, and dress your hero up: there are 19 hats, one being a unicorn horn, 25 colours and 10 trails, a rainbow among them, plus a fire trail that looks convincingly real. Nothing in the shop costs anything but coins won in play.
Safe travels for every family
On this journey there are no ads to sit through, no account to create and nothing that costs real money. Progress is kept on the device where you play. Twenty languages are spoken along the way, an original 14-track soundtrack sets the mood, a setting offers calmer animation, and the game answers to keyboard, touch or mouse.