Frequently Asked Questions

The original Snake is an arcade-style video game that was pre-installed on Nokia mobile phones starting with the Nokia 6110 in 1997. The player controls a growing line (the snake) that moves around the screen, eating food pellets to grow longer while avoiding collisions with walls and its own tail. It became one of the most widely played video games in history, with an estimated 400 million Nokia phones shipping with some version of Snake installed between 1997 and 2007.

Snake was first released on the Nokia 6110 in 1997. The game was programmed by Taneli Armanto, a Finnish software engineer working at Nokia. The Nokia 6110 launched in December 1997 and was the first phone to include the Snake game. Within a few years, Snake became available on virtually every Nokia handset, making it the default mobile gaming experience for hundreds of millions of people worldwide throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The Nokia 6110 was the first mobile phone to include the Snake game. Released in December 1997, the Nokia 6110 was a GSM phone primarily marketed toward business users. Taneli Armanto programmed Snake as one of three built-in games for the device, alongside Memory and Logic. The monochrome display measured 84 by 48 pixels, and the game used simple two-tone graphics — dark pixels on a green-tinted LCD background — which became the iconic look associated with Snake on Nokia phones.

The original Snake was created by Taneli Armanto, a Finnish software engineer employed at Nokia in the mid-1990s. Armanto designed and programmed the game in 1997 for the Nokia 6110 handset. He based it on the classic Snake concept that dates back to the 1976 arcade game Blockade by Gremlin Industries. Armanto adapted the gameplay for the constraints of the Nokia 6110 — a tiny 84 by 48 pixel monochrome screen and a numeric keypad with no dedicated directional controls.

This is a faithful browser-based recreation of the original 1997 Snake game. It replicates the core gameplay mechanics — the grid-based movement, wall collisions, food spawning, and progressive speed increase — inside a photorealistic retro phone frame. The two-tone LCD color palette and pixel grid match the visual style of the Nokia 6110 display. While the original game ran on proprietary hardware, this version runs in any modern web browser and is free to play with no download required.

The original Snake and Slither.io are fundamentally different games that share only a serpentine visual theme. The original Snake is a single-player arcade game played on a fixed grid where the snake grows by eating stationary food and dies by hitting walls or its own body. Slither.io is a massively multiplayer online game where hundreds of players compete simultaneously in an open arena, growing by consuming glowing orbs and eliminating other players. The original Snake focuses on precision and pattern memorization, while Slither.io emphasizes competitive real-time strategy.

The theoretical maximum score in the original Snake depends on the grid size. On the Nokia 6110 with its 84 by 48 pixel display, the playfield is approximately a 20 by 15 grid, which means the snake can grow to fill nearly all 300 cells. Since each food pellet awards 10 points and the snake starts at 3 segments long, the maximum possible score is approximately 2,970 points. In practice, achieving a perfect game is extremely difficult because the snake must navigate increasingly tight spaces at progressively higher speeds.

Yes. This version of Snake is designed to be completely playable without ads interfering with your game. Any advertisements on the site are placed well outside the game area and never appear during active gameplay. The game itself loads instantly in your browser without any pre-roll video ads, interstitials, or pop-ups. You can also install the game as a Progressive Web App for an even cleaner fullscreen experience on mobile devices.

Snake is addictive because it combines simple rules with escalating difficulty in a perfectly calibrated feedback loop. The controls are immediately intuitive — just four directions — so anyone can start playing within seconds. As the snake grows longer with each food pellet, the available space shrinks and the speed increases, creating a natural difficulty curve that keeps players in a flow state. Each game lasts only one to three minutes, making it easy to start "just one more game." This combination of low entry barrier, quick feedback, and progressive challenge explains why Snake became one of the most played games in history.

Snake is widely considered one of the most played mobile games in history. Between 1997 and 2007, Nokia shipped over 400 million phones with Snake pre-installed, giving it an install base that few games have ever matched. While exact play session numbers were never tracked, the combination of being pre-installed on every Nokia handset and the addictive one-more-game loop meant that hundreds of millions of people played Snake regularly. Modern mobile games like Candy Crush Saga and Subway Surfers have since surpassed Snake in total downloads, but Snake held the title of most ubiquitous mobile game for nearly a decade.

To play Snake, use the arrow keys or WASD keys on your keyboard to steer the snake in four directions: up, down, left, and right. The snake moves continuously and you can only change its direction. Eat the food pellets that appear on the screen to score points and grow longer. Avoid hitting the walls at the edge of the playing field and avoid running into your own tail. The game ends when the snake collides with a wall or itself. On mobile devices, you can use the on-screen directional pad or swipe gestures to control the snake.

Snake supports three control methods. On desktop, use the arrow keys (Up, Down, Left, Right) or the WASD keys (W for up, A for left, S for down, D for right). Press Enter or the Start button to begin a game, and press Space or Escape to pause. On mobile devices, tap the on-screen directional pad buttons or use swipe gestures in the direction you want the snake to move. The snake cannot reverse direction — if you are moving right, you cannot immediately turn left.

The key to achieving a high score in Snake is efficient path planning. Stay near the edges of the playing field to give yourself maximum open space in the center. When the snake gets long, use a zigzag pattern to cover the board systematically without trapping yourself. Anticipate where your tail will be several moves ahead. Avoid chasing food into corners, and instead let the food come to you by maintaining a circuit around the perimeter. As the speed increases, keep your movements deliberate — quick reactions matter less than consistent, predictable patterns.

This version of Snake offers three difficulty levels plus a daily challenge. Classic mode replicates the original Nokia 6110 speed, starting at a comfortable pace and gradually accelerating as you score points. Fast mode doubles the base speed for experienced players who want a greater challenge. Impossible mode is designed for expert players with extremely high speed from the start. The Daily Challenge uses Classic mode speed but generates the same food placement sequence for every player each day, creating a fair competitive leaderboard.

The Daily Challenge is a special game mode where every player gets the same food placement sequence for 24 hours. The food positions are generated using a deterministic seed based on the current date, so the challenge is identical for everyone who plays on the same day. This creates a fair competitive environment where scores reflect pure skill rather than random food placement luck. A new challenge generates automatically at midnight UTC each day. Your best daily score appears on the daily leaderboard alongside other players from around the world.

In Snake, you earn 10 points each time the snake eats a food pellet. The snake grows by one segment with each pellet consumed, making the game progressively harder as you score higher. Your total score equals the number of food pellets eaten multiplied by 10. The game speed also increases at certain score thresholds, adding an additional layer of difficulty. After a game ends, you can submit your score to the global leaderboard with a nickname to see how you rank against other players worldwide.

Yes. The Original Snake is fully optimized for mobile devices. The game includes an on-screen directional pad and supports touch swipe gestures for controlling the snake. It works in any modern mobile browser including Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android. You can also install it as a Progressive Web App by using your browser's "Add to Home Screen" option, which gives you a fullscreen app-like experience. The game is responsive and adapts its layout for screens as small as 320 pixels wide.

Yes. The Original Snake includes a service worker that caches all game assets after your first visit. Once cached, you can play the game without an internet connection. This is especially useful if you install the game as a Progressive Web App on your phone — it will work anywhere, even in airplane mode. Note that the leaderboard and score submission features require an internet connection, but the core gameplay is fully available offline.

The Original Snake is built as a modern web application using Next.js, TypeScript, and the HTML5 Canvas API. The game engine renders directly to a canvas element using raw drawing commands — no game frameworks or libraries are used. This keeps the game extremely lightweight and fast-loading. The retro phone frame is built entirely with CSS. The site is server-rendered for fast initial load and SEO, while the game itself runs entirely in the browser for instant responsiveness.

Yes, The Original Snake is completely free to play. There are no in-app purchases, no premium subscriptions, and no pay-to-win mechanics. The game loads instantly in your browser with no download or account creation required. You can play unlimited games across all difficulty levels and submit scores to the global leaderboard at no cost.

Snake became enormously popular on Nokia phones for several converging reasons. First, it was pre-installed on every device — no download, no purchase, no setup required. Second, the game was perfectly designed for the hardware constraints: it needed only a numeric keypad for input and looked sharp on tiny monochrome screens. Third, the gameplay loop was ideal for mobile use — games lasted one to three minutes, perfect for waiting rooms, bus rides, and breaks. Fourth, Nokia dominated the global phone market throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, meaning Snake reached hundreds of millions of users who had no other gaming option on their devices.

The Snake game concept predates Nokia by over two decades. The earliest known Snake-like game was Blockade, released as a two-player arcade game by Gremlin Industries in 1976. Players controlled growing lines that left trails, trying to trap opponents. Through the late 1970s and 1980s, variations appeared on mainframe computers and early personal computers under names like Worm and Nibbles. The concept reached peak cultural impact when Taneli Armanto programmed Snake for the Nokia 6110 in 1997. Nokia subsequently released Snake II in 2000 for the Nokia 3310 (which added wraparound walls and bonus items) and Snake III with improved graphics for color-screen phones.

Snake I, released on the Nokia 6110 in 1997, featured a single-screen playfield with solid wall boundaries. The snake died upon hitting any wall. Snake II, released on the Nokia 3310 in 2000, introduced several new features: the snake could wrap around screen edges (exiting one side and entering the opposite), maze-like obstacles appeared at higher levels, and bonus food items offered extra points. Snake II also had improved graphics suitable for the slightly larger Nokia 3310 display. The core gameplay remained the same — guide a growing snake to eat food without colliding with obstacles.

While exact play session data was never tracked, Nokia shipped over 400 million phones with Snake pre-installed between 1997 and 2007. Industry analysts estimate that Snake was played by at least 350 million unique users during that period, making it one of the most played video games of all time. The Nokia 3310 alone, which included Snake II, sold over 126 million units. At its peak in the early 2000s, Snake was likely played by more people daily than any other video game in the world.

When Nokia transitioned to smartphones, Snake evolved with the platforms. Nokia released Snake III and Snake Xenzia for its Symbian operating system phones in the mid-2000s, adding color graphics and new game modes. When HMD Global relaunched the Nokia brand in 2017, they included an updated version of Snake on the Nokia 3310 reboot and later released Snake on Facebook Messenger as a playable instant game. In 2019, Nokia partnered with Facebook to bring a multiplayer version of Snake to Messenger, introducing the classic game to a new generation of players.