Garden Snake

Garden Snake is the classic snake game grown into a campaign of 120 tiny 3D garden dioramas with a clay-toy look. You steer a garden snake, eat fruit to grow longer, and avoid rocks, pots, the hedge around the edge and your own tail. The snake glides smoothly from tile to tile instead of jumping, and it remembers the next few turns you press, so quick corners feel sharp.

The campaign has eight seasonal gardens of fifteen levels each. Every level has its own goal: eat a number of fruit, pick every piece already placed on the lawn, or grow to a target length, and some levels add a sundial you must beat. Each level shows a three-star time, and clearing it faster earns more stars. The first level of every garden is a hand-made introduction to its new idea, levels 5 and 10 are challenges, and level 15 is a bigger garden show.

Each garden adds a new idea instead of just more speed. Glowing mushroom rings send you out of their twin, still heading the same way. Locked vegetable beds open when you eat the golden key of the same colour. Hedges roll along rails and wait if you are in their way, but you must not run into them. In the orchard every fruit you eat plants a seed that soon grows into a pumpkin. Lily pads sink once you have crossed them and float back up a little later, ice won't let you turn until you reach grass again, and at night hedgehogs walk little patrol loops. Golden berries stay only for a moment and count double, and melons make you three pieces longer. Every layout is checked for fairness and cleared by a bot before it is accepted.

Some tips. Press your next turn a moment before a corner, since the snake will remember it. In pumpkin levels, watch where new sprouts appear and keep an open route around them before they grow. On the pond, avoid doubling back over a pad you have just crossed. Before stepping onto ice, line up so the slide ends on grass. With hedgehogs, wait for one to pass and slip in behind it.

Beyond the campaign there is a daily garden built from the gardens you have opened, and an endless garden that speeds up as you eat and keeps your best score. Seeds buy twelve snake skins and seven hats, and progress is saved to your Benerits account. It plays in the browser with keyboard, mouse or touch, on desktop and on phones and tablets in portrait or landscape.

Your goal is to grow the snake as long as you can and beat your best score. Collect berries and steer your snake, which gets a little faster with every bite, without hitting the hedge, the pots or your own tail. Hit something and the run ends, and you start again.

The game starts calm, but as the snake grows longer and faster, the lawn gets tighter. Because your next two turns are remembered, you can queue turns ahead of time in tight corners. If you want a gentler game, turn the pots off or switch on wrap-around edges.