Snake (video game genre)

Snake is a 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.

The genre originated in the 1976 competitive arcade video game Blockade from Gremlin Industries where the goal is to survive longer than the other player. Blockade and the initial wave of clones that followed were purely abstract and didn't use snake terminology. The concept evolved into a single-player variant where a line with a head and tail gets longer with each piece of food eaten—often apples or eggs—increasing the likelihood of self collision. 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. The 1982 Tron arcade video game, based on the film, includes snake gameplay for the single-player Light Cycles segment, and some later snake games borrow the theme.

After a version simply called Snake was preloaded on Nokia mobile phones in 1998, there was a resurgence of interest in snake games.