April Fool’s Day: Google Maps gets Snake game for a week

This April Fool’s Day, Google Maps has reimagined the iconic Snake game as a mapping and transit system.

Snake, the iconic game made popular by Nokia’s feature phones, is back and this time, it is appearing inside Google Maps. The game was first introduced on the Nokia 6610 in 1997 and was the primary source of entertainment on Nokia’s feature phones back in the days when smartphones were not common and people were not connected to internet all the time. As part of April Fool’s Day effort, Google is re-imagining the classic game for Google Maps and it is one really sweet treat. The game is available to play on both iOS and Android versions of the Google Maps app.

Google Maps users can play the game by touching the side navigation bar on the left side of the search bar and tapping on the “Play Snake” option. Since this is Google‘s vision for the game, there is no actual snake here and instead you play as a public transport vehicle. The start screen shows option to choose from Cairo, Sao Paulo, London, Sydney, San Francisco, Tokyo or World. When you select Tokyo, the public transport vehicle becomes bullet train and it is a cable car when you select San Francisco.

Google even lets you play as a London double decker bus and the goal is top pickup passengers using this transport vehicle. There is an 8-bit map of these respective cities and if you select world, then you pick up passengers all over the map. Google says Snake will be playable in Google Maps for roughly a week. There is also a dedicated site for the game in case you want to play on the desktop.

Google is known for playing pranks on April Fool’s Day but this is more like the fun side of the tech giant. In 2012, the search giant announced a NES-inspired 8-bit Google Maps and added a Pac-Man game to Maps in 2015. Last year, it added Where’s Waldo search and this year, it is bringing Snake to the mapping service.