Eat to grow. Loop to crush.

The coil

Steer your head into the side of your own body. The part of the snake from your head to the cell you touched is now a closed loop, and everything inside it is crushed: every enemy and every Spitter shot is removed, and food inside is collected. Then the loop itself is shed, so you come out that many segments shorter, with your head sitting where you touched.

The loop has to enclose at least one cell. A ring only two cells wide has no inside, so touching your side like that is a bite, and a bite ends the run. The arena rim and the walls inside an arena never count as a side of a loop: a U-shape pressed against a wall encloses nothing. Only your body closes a coil.

Shorter is easier to steer, but it takes length to ring a crowd. That trade is the whole game, and after each coil it flashes at the top of the arena, for example -8 length, +120.

Controls

• Phone: swipe anywhere on the arena. The turn fires as soon as your finger has moved 24 pixels, before you lift it; keep your thumb down and bend the stroke to chain a second turn. Tap a card to pick a mutation.
• Keyboard: ↑ ↓ ← → or W A S D to turn, 1 2 3 to pick a card, Space to go again after a death, Esc for the title.
• Gamepad: d-pad or left stick to turn, A or Start to go again, X for Split.

Two turns can be queued ahead of the snake, so a quick U-turn of two presses is never lost, and a turn straight back into your own neck is ignored rather than killing you. If the tab loses focus the run pauses; tap or press any key to carry on.

Enemies

• Hunter (arrowhead): steps toward your head at half your speed. Your body is a wall to it, which is how you herd one into a loop.
• Spitter (notched square): never moves. It shows a line for two thirds of a second, then fires a shot along it at twice your speed. Your body absorbs shots; your head does not.
• Swarm (three dots): wanders and drifts toward you. It never steps in front of your head, so it only kills a snake that steers into it.

Every run meets all three in its first three spawns. Running your head into any enemy, a shot, a wall or the rim ends the run, and the death screen names which one it was.

Arenas and goals

A run is a string of arenas, five to a sector. Each one has a single goal, shown under the score, and clearing it warps you to the next arena after a one-second pause. In the first sector:

• Arena 1, Open field: eat 10. No inner walls.
• Arenas 2 to 4: the Centre pillar, Two lanes and Ring layouts, in an order set by the run's seed, with the goals eat 12, crush 4 and survive 40 seconds, also shuffled. A survive arena sends more enemies, mostly Hunters.
• Arena 5, Broken walls: crush 6, with the most enemies.

After arena 5 the next sector starts, and its eat and crush targets are half as large again (eat 15, crush 6 and so on), while survive goals get 10 seconds longer. Enemies arrive more often as a run goes on, and later arenas allow more of them at once; but you never speed up, and neither do they.

Mutations

Every food you eat and every enemy you kill adds one to the meter under the score. At 8 the game freezes and offers three mutations you do not already have; the one you pick lasts for the rest of the run, and the next offer comes 8 more points later. The eight:

• Magnet: food within 4 cells of your head is pulled into your path, one cell every 0.1 s.
• Dash: press the same direction twice fast (within 0.28 s) to lunge 3 cells at once. Recharges in 2 s.
• Venom Tail: enemies that touch your body for 0.75 s die of venom.
• Split: Space or a second finger sheds the back half of your tail as a wall enemies cannot cross for 10 s.
• Phase: once per arena, biting your own body passes through it instead of killing you.
• Overcharge: a coil around 6 or more cells also blasts enemies touching its outside, and the blast jumps on twice more.
• Glass Scales: double score, but a Spitter shot hitting any part of you is fatal, and Phase is lost.
• Hydra: your tail grows a second head: close a coil of 12 or more cells and it bites everything within 2 cells.

Scoring

Only kills score; food makes you longer and fills the meter but is worth no points. A coil that crushes n enemies is worth 10 × n(n+1)/2: each extra enemy in the same loop is worth 10 more than the one before, so three in one loop pay 60 where three separate loops pay 30. Enemies caught by an Overcharge blast or a Hydra bite count into the same coil.

Combo: crush again within 3 seconds and that coil is multiplied by 2, the next by 3, and so on; each crush restarts the 3 seconds, and a ring round your head drains as they run out. Arena: everything is then multiplied by the arena's number, counted across sectors (arena 3 is ×3; the first arena of sector 2 is ×6). Glass Scales doubles it again.

A worked example: in arena 3, a loop around three enemies, made less than 3 seconds after a previous crush, pays 60 × 2 × 3 = 360. Venom Tail kills are not coils: each is worth 10, times the arena and Glass Scales.

What this build does not have yet: bosses, a daily arcade run and an arcade leaderboard. Your score is shown on the death screen and is not saved or sent anywhere.

The other game

The daily puzzle is danksnake's original game: one 19 by 19 board a day, the same for everyone, where every cell you enter stays part of you. Nothing is timed. About danksnake says what the site keeps.