Drill the Snake

The pitch

Snake Drill is a casual arcade defense game where you protect the surface from giant segmented snakes crawling up from underground tunnels. A giant segmented snake is crawling up through winding tunnels toward the surface, and your only weapon is a swinging pendulum drill. Time your strikes to shatter the snake's body segment by segment before its head breaks through. Upgrade your drill, use a roguelike card system that changes every run. Swing your drill like a pendulum, time your attack, and shatter the snake's body segment by segment before its head reaches the surface. Simple to pick up, hard to master. One button. One drill. One chance to stop what's coming.

Controls & how it runs

Stop the Snake Before It's Too Late! Take control of a powerful drill and defend the surface from massive segmented snakes crawling up from underground. In this intense arcade defense game, you'll time your strikes to shatter the snake's body piece by piece. Swing your drill, aim carefully, and destroy every segment before the snake's head reaches the top! Desktop Controls: Tap to launch drill attack. Spacebar to launch drill attack. Mobile Controls: Tap to launch drill attack.

Getting a run going takes exactly one press: Press start, up top, and the game boots inside this page — nothing downloads in the background and no form wants your details before the first jump. The cabinet is drawn for a flexible screen and listens to mouse, keyboard or touch, whichever the game prefers. It reshapes itself for tall and wide screens alike, so phone, tablet and desktop all get the full picture. Given a fullscreen button, use it — scores look better at full size, that's just science.

Pro tips for arcade cabinets

• Treat your first run as a scouting mission. Arcade cabinets hide their cruelty in the second minute, not the first — learn where the difficulty spikes before you start chasing numbers.
• Small scores compound. Grab the easy pickups on every pass instead of gambling the whole run on one heroic line; heroes respawn, banked points don't evaporate.
• Watch the edges of the screen. In classic arcade design the next problem almost always enters from somewhere you weren't looking — build the habit of scanning the borders.

Drill the Snake — quick-fire questions

Does Drill the Snake cost anything to play?

Not a token. The cabinet is free from the first run to the five-hundredth — no wallet, no sign-up, no toll booth hiding three levels in. The adverts around the page are what keep the floor's lights on.

What sort of game is Drill the Snake?

It stands on our Arcade row — that's the family it plays most like. The pitch above is the publisher's own rundown of what it throws at you and what it hands back.

Can I play Drill the Snake on my phone?

Happily, yes. It runs inside the browser on phones and tablets the same way it does on a computer. It reshapes itself for tall and wide screens alike, so phone, tablet and desktop all get the full picture.

Do I need to install anything first?

Nothing whatsoever. Drill the Snake is an HTML5 game: hit the start button and it boots on this page, and shutting the tab sweeps the cabinet clean behind you.

Before you wander off

Personal best banked, or still chasing it? Either way the full Arcade row is powered on and waiting — The main floor: 415 cabinets of pure arcade stock — the quick, the loud and the gloriously unfair. If it beeps, flashes and dares you to beat a number, it lives on this row.