Snake
Two to four snakes share one field. Every snake moves a cell at a time and cannot stop; eat to grow, and stay off the walls, the bodies and each other. The last one moving takes the round, and the first to three rounds takes the match.
The field
- The field is 24 cells by 24, walled on all four sides. There is no wrapping around the edges.
- Every snake starts three cells long, three cells in from the middle of its own side, facing inward. The seed decides which side each player gets.
- Snakes move eight cells a second and never stop. You steer with the arrow keys, with W, A, S and D, or by swiping the field on a phone.
- You cannot turn back on yourself: a snake heading right will not take a press for left. Turning up and then left in the same moment is two turns, and both are taken.
- Two pieces of food sit on the field at once. Eating one makes your snake a cell longer and another piece appears somewhere the seed chooses.
The round
- A round opens with a three-second countdown. Nobody moves until it has run.
- A snake is out when its head meets a wall, its own body, another snake's body, or another snake's head. Two heads that meet kill both, and so do two that swap places.
- The cell a tail is leaving this instant is free, so you can follow your own tail down a corridor. A snake that has just eaten is still growing, its tail stays put, and that same cell will kill you.
- A snake that is out leaves the field at once: its body is not a wall for the rest of the round.
- The round is over when one snake is left, and that snake takes it. If the last two go out together, the round belongs to nobody.
- A round that runs two minutes stops there and the longest snake takes it. Equal longest, and nobody takes it.
How a game ends
- The first player to take three rounds wins the match.
- After nine rounds the match stops and the most rounds wins. Level at the top is a draw.
- A player who resigns is out of the match. At two players the other one wins; at three or four the match goes on without them and they are placed last.
- Every seat is on the clock the whole time, so the site's move deadline of five minutes is only a dead man's switch: if nothing at all happens for that long, the match is abandoned and nobody is rated. A player who leaves in the middle is covered by the bot within half a second, and forfeits their seat after losing two whole rounds away.
Worth knowing before you start
- The server runs the field and decides everything. Your turn takes effect on the next tick, an eighth of a second, and the page draws your snake turning before the answer arrives so it feels immediate.
- Snake needs a live connection. If your browser or network cannot open one the page says so rather than offering a game that cannot move.
- Eating is how you win and how you die. A longer snake blocks more of the field, and it also has more of itself to run into.
- The bot plays at one of three strengths, drawn per match from the seed: one only looks one cell ahead, one goes for the food, and one counts the room behind each way out before it turns. All three lose their heads now and then, on purpose.
The seed decides where every round begins and where each piece of food falls, and it is published when the match ends, so the whole match can be replayed from the log and checked.
Snake terms
- A round
- One life each on a shared field, from the countdown to the last snake moving. A match is the first to three of them.
- The cap
- Two minutes. A round that reaches it goes to the longest snake, or to nobody if two are level.
- Head-on
- Two heads entering the same cell, or swapping cells. Both snakes are out: nobody wins that exchange.