To celebrate April Fools' Day, Google is launching a new Snake Easter egg game.
It's adding the classic arcade title to Google Maps for iOS and Android, but it's also making it available via a dedicated webpage for those who don't have the navigation app installed on their devices.
Snake But With A Twist
In the game, players can choose among six major locations: Tokyo, Japan; Sydney, Australia; São Paulo, Brazil; San Francisco, California; London, England; and Cairo, Egypt. They can also pick the "World" option to play on a global stage.
After choosing one, they are then tasked with operating some form of transportation. For instance, they'll play as a double decker bus in London or a train in Tokyo. The objective is to pick up (or gobble?) passengers around the map, as well as visit places such as Big Ben and the Golden Gate Bridge and eat things like fortune cookies or ramen to score more points.
As for how it plays, it's pretty much the same as the original arcade game, where players can move in four directions and their snake — or in this case, a train, a cable car, or a bus — becomes longer each time they reach a target. The game ends when they crash into themselves or an obstacle, such as the edge of a map in Google's take.
How To Play Snake On Google Maps
On the app, just click on the menu button in the upper left corner of the screen and look for "Play Snake." Alternatively, there's a standalone page for the game that makes it playable not only on mobile but also on desktop.
In a blog post, Google says it's rolling out the Snake Easter egg to iOS and Android devices worldwide. However, it will be live for only "about a week," but those who get hooked on it will be glad to know that it'll be available longer on the aforementioned standalone website.
The Mountain View company isn't one to pass up the opportunity to do something for April Fools' Day. In 2018, it introduced stuff like Waldo in Maps and the Google Cloud Hummus API. Also, it already added a classic arcade game to Maps before — Pac-Man in 2015 and Ms. Pac-Man in 2017.
