Moames

Ivy Snake

About Ivy Snake

Ivy Snake is a free snake game you can play online on desktop or mobile. Steer a growing ivy vine around the board, eat berries to get longer, and keep clear of the walls and your own leaves. Choose Classic, Wrap or Garden mode, chase golden berries for bonus points, and beat your best score in each.

How to play

  1. Press Start or Space, then turn with the arrow keys or WASD. On a phone, swipe in the direction you want to go.
  2. Eat the red berries to grow one cell longer and score 10 points.
  3. Golden berries are worth 50 points but fade after five seconds, and they do not make you longer.
  4. The run ends when the head hits a wall, a rock or the vine itself.

How to play the snake game

The vine moves one cell at a time and never stops, so all you control is which way it turns. Each red berry adds one cell to its length and 10 points to your score, and a new berry appears at once on a random empty cell. Turning straight back the way you came is ignored, so a mistimed key press never runs you into your own neck. Two quick presses in a row both count, which makes tight U-turns along a wall reliable. The board is 17 cells square, so a long vine soon fills a lot of it.

Speed and scoring

The vine starts at about seven steps a second and speeds up a little every five berries, until it tops out at about fifteen steps a second near the 50-berry mark. Red berries are worth 10 points each. Now and then a golden berry appears as well. It is worth 50 points, and the ring around it shows how much of its five seconds is left. Golden berries do not make the vine longer, so they are free points if you can reach them safely. Your best score is saved in your browser for each mode separately.

Classic, Wrap and Garden modes

Classic is the original snake game: the edges of the board are walls, and touching one ends the run. In Wrap mode there are no walls. Leave the board on one side and the vine comes back on the opposite side, so the only thing you can hit is yourself, and runs last much longer. Garden mode keeps the walls and adds a rock every four berries. Rocks never appear right next to the head or in the cell in front of it, but they stay for the whole run, so the open space shrinks as your score climbs.

Tips for higher scores

Early on, go straight for each berry, because the vine is short and the board is empty. Once the vine is longer than about a third of a row, stop cutting across the middle. Move in long sweeps along the edges and back, so the body lines up in neat rows and always leaves a way out. Before you turn into a gap, make sure it is bigger than your vine, or the tail will not clear in time. Remember that the tail moves on as you move, so following close behind your own tail is a safe way to wait for space, except on the step you eat a berry, when the tail stays put. In Garden mode, plan routes around the rocks early, before the vine is long enough to box you in.

Controls on keyboard and touch

On a computer, use the arrow keys or W, A, S and D, and press Space to start a new run. On a phone or tablet, swipe on the board in the direction you want to turn. A swipe only needs to be short, and a long swipe that bends around a corner counts as two turns. The game pauses when you switch to another tab or app, and Resume carries on from the same spot. Use Fullscreen under the game for a bigger board on small screens.

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