Snake

Snake is a sub-genre of action video games where the player maneuvers the end of a growing line, often themed as a snake. The player must keep the snake from colliding with both other obstacles and itself, which gets harder as the snake lengthens. It originated in the 1976 two-player arcade video game Blockade from Gremlin Industries where the goal is to survive longer than the other player. The concept evolved into a single-player variant where a snake gets longer with each piece of food eaten—often apples or eggs. The simplicity and low technical requirements of snake games have resulted in hundreds of versions—some of which have the word snake or worm in the title—for many platforms.

The original Blockade from 1976 and its many clones are two-player games. Viewed from a top-down perspective, each player controls a “snake” with a fixed starting position and which continually moves forward, growing longer. It must be steered left, right, up, and down to avoid hitting walls and the body of either snake. The player who survives the longest wins. A single-player version of the concept has one or more snakes under AI control, as in the light cycles segment of the Tron arcade game.

In the most common single-player game, the players snake is of a certain length, so the tail also moves, and with every item “eaten” by the head of the snake the snake gets longer. Snake Byte has the snake eating apples. Nibbler has the snake eating abstract objects in a maze.