A snake game made of light
Grace Line is a free snake game that runs in your browser. You steer a growing line of light across a dark board, eat the glowing pickups to get longer, and try not to run into a wall or into your own body.
It starts slowly and gets quicker with every pickup you eat, not with the clock, so waiting never makes it harder. Every sixth pickup is a gold halo worth five times as much as a spark.
How to play Grace Line
- The line starts four cells long, heading right, on a board 22 cells wide and 16 high.
- Steer with the arrow keys, WASD, a swipe, or the on-screen arrows on a phone.
- Eat the pickups. A spark gives 10 points, and every sixth pickup is a halo worth 50. Each one makes the line one cell longer and a little faster.
- Stay away from the walls. They kill you, and there is no wrap-around to the other side.
- Do not touch your own body. When you crash, LINE BROKEN appears and you can go again after a short pause.
Controls
- Keyboard: ← ↑ ↓ → or W A S D. Pressing the opposite direction is ignored instead of killing you.
- Touch: swipe on the board (about 18 pixels of finger movement is enough), or use the arrow pad that appears on phones.
- P pauses, Enter or Space (or a tap) restarts after LINE BROKEN, Esc goes back to the game list.
Scoring and rules
Sparks give 10 points and halos give 50. Every sixth pickup is a halo, so six pickups are worth 100 points. Both kinds grow the line by one cell and speed it up by the same amount.
Speed depends only on how many pickups you have eaten. The line starts at about 7 cells per second and tops out at about 16 cells per second after 26 pickups. There are no levels and no time limit: the game ends only when you crash.
Tips to score higher
- Use the input buffer. The game remembers up to two turns, so you can press down and then left in quick succession to make a U-turn.
- Do not hit the opposite key by reflex. It does nothing, but it takes up one of the two buffer slots.
- Keep away from the edges once you are long. The walls kill and there is no wrap.
- Plan around your tail. Moving into the cell your tail is leaving is safe, except on the move that eats a pickup, when the tail does not move and the hit counts.
- Go for the halos. They grow the line by the same single cell as a spark, but they are worth five times the points.
Questions
- Do the walls wrap around?
- No. Touch a wall and the line breaks.
- Is there a time limit?
- No. The only thing that ends a game is a crash.
- Can I play Grace Line on my phone?
- Yes. Swipe on the board or use the arrow pad under it. Your best score stays in your browser.