Each player takes turns at placing a coloured 4 by 4 tile abutting, but not overlapping, already played tiles. The tiles comprise of up to four different colours.
The purpose is to make continuous snakes of the same colour running through the tile that you have just played. The longer the snake, the more points scored, with each square of the snake contributing one point. Before playing, you may rotate the tiles to try and get a higher score.
The game is over after all the tiles have been played. No tile may overlap another. Except for the first tile, the played tile must touch any other tile along at least part of an edge. The played tile cannot touch at just a corner only. Neither can you play a tile away from the other tiles. The program adheres to these rules. Trying to play a tile wrongly will result in a beep, and the tile will not be played. It's still your go until you play the tile correctly.
If you are running short of space on one side of the board, then the board can be scrolled by moving the tile to the board edge where more space is required. The board will then scroll. The board will scroll automatically if the computer player places a tile within four cells of any edge. There is an off-chance that this will result in oscillatory motion if the tiles ever span from edge to edge across (or down) the board. But there you go, a bug if you like, but what else can it do? The chance of this happening in a proper game is slight. If it does happen, 'escape' is your only option.
Tiles are moved about the board using the mouse. Tiles are placed in position by de-pressing the middle mouse button. Tiles are rotated clock-wise or anti-clockwise by de-pressing the outer mouse buttons, respectively.
The player who's turn it is to play is indicated by the next tile being shown nearest him, and by his flashing 'player 1' / 'player 2' indicator. The scoring snakes are highlighted on the board. The on-going score is shown both numerically and graphically. The points just scored are high lighted in red, older points in blue.
The number of tiles still to be played are shown
as a line of yellow blocks along the bottom:
The game stops at the end of a game awaiting someone to press a mouse button, when a new game will be started.
There are 42 tiles in the original tile set altogether. After setting the computer playing against itself a dozen times, the highest score reached was 435. An alternative, new set, of tiles with only 36 in the set is selectable. With the new set, branching of the snake is possible, which may result in much longer snakes, and consequently higher scores.
The program begins by pitching two humans against each other. However, you may chose to play the computer, or have the computer battle against itself. It is best to select which of the three BEFORE play begins, or during a Human versus Human match. It IS possible to alter who is playing if one or more of the players you have selected is a computer, but you have to be patient, and keep the button pressed, because the computer is a little deaf and doesn't hear you very well while it is thinking.