Snake Arena

About Snake Arena

Snake Arena is a snake game with no grid: your snake glides freely round a big round arena, turning smoothly wherever you point. Eat pellets to grow longer and thicker, boost to cut in front of rivals, and turn the tables on eleven other snakes. Bump your head into another snake's body and you burst into a trail of pellets for everyone else to eat.

Also called: snake io, multiplayer snake game, worm game.

How to play Snake Arena

1. Press Play. Your snake is the green one with white stripes, and the camera follows it.
2. On a computer, your snake heads toward the mouse pointer. You can also turn with A and D or the left and right arrow keys.
3. On a phone or tablet, drag anywhere on the arena to steer, like a joystick, and hold the round bolt button to boost.
4. Eat the small coloured pellets to grow. Every pellet adds to your length, which is also your score.
5. Hold the mouse button, Space (or W / the up arrow) to boost. You go twice as fast, but you shrink while you do it and leave a line of small pellets behind you.
6. Stay alive: if your head touches another snake's body, or the edge of the arena, the run is over. Press P or Escape to pause.

Rules

• Only heads are dangerous to their owners. If your head touches any part of another snake's body, you are out. Heads bumping into heads do nothing.
• You can't crash into yourself. Your own body is safe to cross, so coiling up tight is allowed.
• The thick ink ring is the arena wall. Touching it ends your run.
• Snakes turn at a limited rate, and the bigger you are, the wider you turn. You can't spin round on the spot.
• Boosting burns about six points of length a second. You can't boost once you are down to a small snake.
• When a snake dies, most of its length is scattered along its body as pellets in its own colour. Whoever gets there first eats them. Pellets dropped by boosting and by dead snakes fade after about 45 seconds.
• You are ranked by length against every snake in the arena. Knock out a snake by making it run into you and you get the kill. Bots that go down come back a few seconds later.

Snake Arena tips and strategy

• Cut them off. Most kills come from boosting across the front of a snake so its head runs into your side. Get ahead first, then turn across its path.
• Circle to trap. Once you are long, loop round a smaller snake and slowly tighten the circle. It has nowhere to go but into you.
• Boost in short bursts. Every second of boost costs length. Save it for a kill, an escape, or racing to the pellets a big snake leaves behind.
• Watch the heads, not the bodies. A body is only a wall; a head coming toward your side is the threat.
• Give the arena edge plenty of room. It is easy to get squeezed against it by a rival.
• Use the minimap in the corner to find crowds (and the pellets that come with them), or to get away from them while you are small.