Snak

There are A LOT of Snake games available on the Playdate, but this is the only “official” one in Season One. Did you know that “Snake” is its own video game genre on Wikipedia? If you had a Nokia phone growing up, or watched Tron, or played the first iteration of the genre – 1976’s two-player-only arcade game Blockade – you have an idea of what Snak is. The main hook in this run at the genre is that you can jump over your own tail, and the apples can eat you back. There are also multiple difficulty levels/speeds, differentiated on the title screen by an increasing number of “A’s” in “Snaaaake.”

If you miss eating one of the apples, it attaches itself to your body, slowly working its way toward your head. If it reaches your head, or you run into your own tail or the wall, you lose. Snake rules. You can eat the carnivorous apples off your own body by jumping over yourself, though. You get one life to reach the top of the online leaderboards.

This game doesn’t use the crank at all because developer Zach Gage was mainly an iOS developer. So for him, just using buttons was such a novel idea, and he really wanted a sort of evergreen game that you wouldn’t burn out on, that you could play years later and still remember how. And he remembered playing games on his TI-83 graphing calculator in high school, and he remembered Snake. Every new, small, constrained gaming system needs an included copy of Snake. This is his. The jump button adds a lot, but it’s also still just Snake. Well… Snak. Feels good, plays well. Be a snake, eat apples.

(Included for free as part of Season One.)