Which Snake game should you play first?

New to Snake? Start with Classic Snake on the regular board — the original rules at a fair speed. Feeling nostalgic? Nokia Snake recreates the 1997 phone original, monochrome green and all. Want speed? Snake Extreme and Hungry Snake run at Rabbit pace. Want to relax? Snake Puzzle uses Peace rules — you literally cannot die, so it becomes a board-filling puzzle.

Every variant shares the same goal — eat, grow, survive — but changes one or two ingredients: the mode (Classic, Portal, Cheese or Peace), the speed (Turtle, Snake or Rabbit), the map size (Small 10×9, Regular 17×15, Big 24×21) and the look. That is exactly how Google Snake's own settings work, and it is why 16 combinations can feel like 16 different games.

Free snake games online — no download, on any device

All 16 games above are free snake games that run in your browser — no download, no installer, no account, on PC, Mac, Chromebook, Android and iPhone. Each Play button loads that variant into the console instantly; each game page gives you its rules, exact settings, a strategy tip and an FAQ before you play. If a search for "snake game unblocked" brought you here: because these games are ordinary web pages, they work wherever browser games are allowed. Questions about controls, modes or scoring are answered on the FAQ page and in the How to Play guide.

The rules in 30 seconds

• The snake never stops moving. There is no brake and no reverse — a 180° turn into your own neck is impossible by design.
• Each apple is worth 10 points and adds one segment of length.
• In Classic mode, touching a wall or any part of your own body ends the game.
• In Portal mode, walls wrap: exit left, enter right. Only your own body can kill you.
• In Cheese mode, five apples are on the board at all times — growth is five times as fast.
• In Peace mode, nothing can kill you. It is a practice and puzzle mode, not a score attack.

Controls on every device

Desktop / laptop	Arrow keys or W A S D to steer · Space to pause · P also pauses on most keyboards
Phone / tablet	Swipe in any direction on the board, or tap the on-screen direction pad under the console
Chromebook	Arrow keys and WASD work exactly as on desktop
Gamepad	Not required — Snake is designed around four-direction input, and keyboard/touch give the tightest control

Speeds: Turtle, Snake, Rabbit

Google Snake popularised three speed settings, and this site uses the same ladder. Turtle moves at roughly a third of classic speed — use it to learn a new map or mode. Snake is the original Nokia-era pace and the best default for score runs. Rabbit is roughly three times faster than Snake; at that speed you are not reacting, you are executing a route you already planned. If Rabbit feels impossible, that is normal — drop to Turtle, learn the board's turning rhythm, then climb back up.

Map sizes: Small, Regular, Big

Small (10×9) is the Nokia-style board: tight, fast-filling, and brutal once you pass 30 segments. Regular (17×15) is the balanced default — enough room to build long snakes without the board feeling empty. Big (24×21) forgives early mistakes and suits Peace and Cheese modes, but long cross-board trips to an apple become their own risk: the longer the journey, the more of your own body lies across the route back.

Your first five games — a practice plan

• Game 1–2: Peace mode, Turtle speed, Regular map. Just learn steering and watch how growth changes your turning circle.
• Game 3: Classic mode, Turtle speed. Add walls and self-collision at a pace you can think at.
• Game 4: Classic mode, Snake speed, Small map. The authentic Nokia difficulty.
• Game 5: Portal mode, Snake speed, Regular map. Learn to use wrap-around escapes — then read the Tips page and start chasing scores.

How to play Google Snake specifically

Google Snake uses the same controls as every version on this page — arrows, WASD, swipe — but adds two things classic Snake doesn't have: settings and modes. Before a Google Snake run you choose a speed (Turtle, Snake or Rabbit), a map (Small, Regular or Big) and one of the 17 modes, and those three choices together decide the difficulty more than your reflexes do. New Google Snake players should start on Classic mode, Snake speed, Regular map — Google's own default combination — and change one setting at a time. The mode-by-mode differences are covered in the Modes hub, and quick questions are answered on the FAQ page.

Common beginner mistakes

Chasing the apple in a straight line without planning the exit — always aim at the space past the apple. Hugging one corner — your tail fills it and traps you. Turning twice quickly to "dodge" — the second turn usually points you into your own body. And the classic: speeding up when panicking. At Rabbit speed there is no thinking time; route discipline, covered on the Tips & Strategies page, is the whole skill.

Play Snake Now Explore the 17 Modes

How the modes change the game

Every mode keeps the same core — steer, eat, grow — and changes exactly one pressure. Some change the board (Wall, Statue, Minesweeper add obstacles or hidden danger). Some change movement (Portal and No Borders remove deadly edges; Dimension flips the board). Some change you (Twin gives you two snakes; Winged lets you cross your own body; Yin Yang adds a rival). And Peace removes losing altogether, which turns Snake into a completely different, meditative puzzle.

If you only try three, make them Portal (the best pure-score mode), Cheese (the fastest growth) and Sokoban (the biggest departure — Snake as a box-pushing puzzle).

Why has Snake lasted 50 years?

Three reasons. Zero learning curve — four directions and one rule, understood in ten seconds by a child or a grandparent. Perfect difficulty curve — the game gets harder automatically because success literally fills the board; the better you play, the less room you have. And total portability — Snake has run on arcade boards, home computers, calculators, phones, watches and browsers, because it needs almost no computing power at all.

Snake at a glance — quick facts

First appearance	Blockade, arcade, 1976 (Gremlin)
Eat-to-grow added	Snake Byte, Apple II, 1982
Nokia version	1997, Nokia 6110, programmed by Taneli Armanto
Snake II	2000, Nokia 3310
Google Snake launch	27 September 2017, Google's 19th birthday
Google Snake modes	17 — Classic, Wall, Portal, Cheese, No Borders, Twin, Winged, Yin Yang, Key, Sokoban, Poison, Dimension, Minesweeper, Statue, Light, Peace, Blender
Ownership	Public-domain concept — no single company owns Snake

About this site

This is an independent, fan-made tribute built for the modern web: all 16 variants and 4 core modes playable instantly, a full page for every game and every one of the 17 Google Snake modes, a complete how-to-play guide, strategy tips, the full history, and a blog covering the people and stories behind the game. It is free, needs no download or account, works on phones and desktops, and offers dark and light themes on every page. Snake itself is a public-domain concept; this site is not affiliated with Google or Nokia.

Play Snake Now Read the Blog

The pattern underneath all six tips

Every tip above serves one principle: your tail is moving free space. Your head fills the board, but your tail empties it at exactly the same rate. Good players ride that wave — they stay just ahead of their own tail, in the band of the board that is constantly being cleared. Bad players sprint away from their tail into uncleared space, fill it, and discover the exit is behind a wall of their own body.

That is also why the famous "wall-hug then zig-zag" endgame works: sweep the board in neat rows, one row behind your tail, and the board can never surprise you. It is not the fastest way to eat apples, but past 1,000 points, survival — not speed — is what scores are made of. Practise the pattern on Snake Puzzle (Peace mode, where mistakes are free), then run it for real on Classic Snake.

Put It Into Practice — Play

What this Snake blog covers

Four strands, all about one game. History: the 1976 origins in Blockade, the 1982 apple that changed everything, and whether Snake was really the first video game. People: Taneli Armanto, the engineer behind Nokia Snake, and the Nibbler record-chasers of the Man vs. Snake documentary. Culture: hidden Snake Easter eggs, the Google Snake mods and speedrun scene, and why the game is still popular after 50 years. Build it yourself: a full JavaScript tutorial that explains the exact architecture — grid, game loop, input queue, collision — behind the playable console on this site. New here? Start with the origins story, then play a run with fresh eyes.

What we collect

Nothing personal. There is no registration, no login, no newsletter and no comment system, so we never ask for or store your name, email address or any account details. The Contact page opens your own email app — messages go from your email provider to ours, like any normal email.

What stays on your device

• Theme choice — dark or light is kept only while you use the site in this session, so it can follow you from page to page.
• Best score — shown on the game console for your current session only.
• No game data, scores or settings are uploaded anywhere.

Cookies and advertising — Google AdSense

This site is supported by advertising. When ads are served on the hosted version of this site through Google AdSense, the following applies:

• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website and other websites.
• Google's use of advertising cookies enables Google and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
• You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings page. You can also opt out of some third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising via the industry opt-out pages (aboutads.info in the US, youronlinechoices.eu in Europe).
• Where required by law (EEA, UK and Switzerland), ads are served only after consent is given through a certified consent management platform, and non-personalised ads may be shown when consent for personalised ads is not given.
• AdSense may collect and process data such as your IP address, browser type, device information and pages visited, in accordance with Google's own Privacy Policy, to serve, measure and protect ads. We do not receive or store that data ourselves.

This preview build sets no advertising or tracking cookies of its own: the game, theme and scores run locally in your browser session only, exactly as described above.

Your privacy rights

Because this site collects no personal data directly, most data-protection rights (access, correction, deletion) have nothing to attach to here. For data that advertising partners may process, those rights are exercised with the partner — for Google, through your Google account's privacy controls and Ads Settings. California residents: we do not sell personal information, because we do not collect any.

Fonts and third-party services

The site loads fonts from Google Fonts, which means your browser contacts Google's font servers when a page loads. No other third-party trackers, analytics beacons or social-media pixels are embedded in this page.

Children

Snake is a family-friendly game with no chat, no user-generated content and no purchases. Because we collect no personal data, there is nothing about a child — or anyone — for us to share, sell or lose.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with the change described at the top. Privacy questions can be sent via the Contact page.

Last updated: November 2026.

The service

This site provides a free, browser-based implementation of the Snake game concept, together with guides, mode explanations, history and blog content. No download, payment or account is required or offered. The game is provided "as is", for entertainment — high scores are for personal satisfaction and carry no prizes or monetary value.

Intellectual property

• The Snake game concept is public domain; no single person or company owns it.
• The original text, guides, artwork styling and code on this site belong to this site and may not be republished wholesale without permission. Short quotations with a link back are welcome.
• Nokia and Google names are used descriptively to discuss their historical Snake versions. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Nokia, HMD, or Google.

Advertising

This is a free, ad-supported site. Advertisements (including Google AdSense ads on the hosted version) are provided by third-party ad networks, are labelled as advertising where required, and are clearly separate from the game and editorial content. We do not endorse products or services shown in ads, and clicking an ad never affects gameplay, scores or rankings. Our Privacy Policy explains how advertising cookies work and how to opt out of personalised ads.

Acceptable use

Don't attempt to disrupt the site, scrape it at a rate that degrades it for others, or use it for anything unlawful. Automated play (bots) is fine for your own amusement — it just won't impress anyone, including the snake.

Availability and liability

We aim to keep the game available and fast, but we don't guarantee uninterrupted service, and we aren't liable for lost high scores, lost time, or meetings missed because one more run turned into twelve. To the maximum extent permitted by law, liability for any claim arising from use of this free site is limited to the amount you paid to use it — which is zero.

Changes

These terms may be updated; the current version always lives on this page. Continued use after a change means acceptance of the updated terms. Questions: see the Contact page.

Last updated: November 2026.

Before you write — quick answers

• The game won't move: click or tap the board once so it has focus, then use the arrow keys — or press the Play button.
• Controls on a phone: swipe on the board, or use the direction pad that appears under the console on touch devices.
• My best score disappeared: best scores last for the current session only in this version — screenshot your triumphs.
• A mode isn't playable: Classic, Portal, Cheese and Peace run in the console; the other 13 modes have full guide pages in the Modes hub.

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