Snake is the game that shipped on a Nokia 6110 and never really left. One rule — eat and grow — and one consequence, which is that every bite makes the board smaller. It is close to a perfect design, and the reason there are a thousand versions of it is that it survives almost any reskin.
Snack Snakes is the arena one, in the slither.io shape: twenty rival snakes, a sea of fruit, and one rule that decides everything — a head that touches another snake’s body is finished. So you cut in front of rivals and let them run into you, and they burst into rivers of fruit. Between matches you merge your snakes into 24 characters and climb seven leagues.
Snake Sprint takes the rule into 3D on a track. You eat what is shorter than you, you avoid what is longer, and you grow long enough to open the chest at the end. On the measured numbers it is one of the stickiest games on the site — an average session of 53 seconds, which for a free browser game is a long time to keep somebody.
Snake Knot turns the snakes into the puzzle. A nest of them lies tangled on a board, and each can only leave straight ahead, out of its head: tap one with a clear line in front of its face and it slithers off, tap one that is blocked and it bonks into its neighbour and costs you a heart. It is the snake-escape puzzle, built in 3D, with snakes that blink, look about and glare when they are bumped.
⚠️ Being straight about the size of this shelf: there are three true snake games here, not twelve. The others below them are on the same page because they run the same rule — start small, eat what is smaller, outgrow the board — and if that is what you came for they will scratch it. Current Swim is the closest, a fish doing exactly that underwater. Centipede Run is the next closest - a centipede that eats every centipede smaller than itself and wears them as segments. Drain Rush 3D and Ooze Overload grow by swallowing and by stretching. None of them is Snake, and we would rather say so than pad a list.
