How to Play Nokia Snake: Rules, Keypad Controls and Scoring

Somebody handed you their phone once and said "here, play this." No tutorial. No instructions. You pressed a few keys, the snake hit a wall, and you said "again." That was the whole learning curve.

But if it's been twenty years, or if you never had a Nokia at all, here's everything you need.

The goal

Eat as many dots as you can without crashing. Every dot makes your snake one block longer and adds to your score. The game never really ends with a win. It ends when you make a mistake.

The controls

On the original phones, you steered with the number keys:

• 2 — up
• 4 — left
• 6 — right
• 8 — down

The snake moves on its own, all the time. You can't stop it and you can't reverse straight back into yourself. You can only turn left or right of the way you're heading. On later phones you could also use the little arrow keys, but most of us kept our thumbs on 2, 4, 6 and 8 because they felt faster.

On our version of Snake you can use the on-screen keypad, the arrow keys on a keyboard, or W, A, S and D. Space pauses.

Levels and speed

Before a game you choose a level from 1 to 9. Level 1 is a gentle stroll. Level 9 is a blur where your thumb is reacting before your brain has caught up.

Scoring

On the Nokia versions, the higher the level, the more points each dot was worth. That's why serious players lived on the fastest levels even though they were terrifying. Same number of dots, a much bigger score. On our Snake, each dot is worth exactly the level number, so level 9 gives 9 points a dot.

How the game ends

You lose when the head of the snake hits:

• a wall, on versions with walls, or
• any part of its own body.

As the snake gets longer, the second one becomes the real danger. By the end, you're not fighting the dots. You're fighting yourself.

Ready for more?

Once you've got the basics, our high score tips will show you how the best players kept going long after everyone else crashed. And if you want the bigger picture, the complete Nokia Snake guide has the whole story.