Viper Sprint

Viper Sprint takes a familiar idea and tunes it until it clicks. Here you get a starting step of 100 ms that tightens as you eat, wrapped in a clean, distraction-free board that works just as well on a phone as on a laptop.

How Viper Sprint plays

Big scores come from patience, not speed - hug the edges, keep escape lanes open, and only cut across the middle when the pellet is worth the risk. It is a game about not panicking, dressed up as a game about eating.

Why Viper Sprint sticks

It suits anyone with a queue to wait in or a kettle to watch: students between classes, commuters, parents stealing ten quiet minutes. There is no meta-progression to lose and nothing to catch up on - a week away costs you nothing but a little sharpness.

How to play

1. Press play - your snake starts small in the middle.
2. Swipe or use the arrow keys to steer.
3. Eat every pellet to grow longer and faster.
4. Never touch the walls or your own tail.

Where it sits

Grow the longest snake without touching walls or tail.

A note on the sticker

Read Viper Sprint as a Arkad Shelf game first and a Arkad Shelf game second. The shape explains how the session will end; the group explains what it will ask of you before that.

It is rated 4.4 out of five in our notes, and the number is held up mostly by how quickly it can be restarted rather than by how clever it is.

The practical advice: play it once with the sound off and once with it on. On this board the difference changes how you time your moves.