# Basic game mechanics

#### **Moving**

Your snook moves. If you do nothing it will move forward. Use your mouse or keyboard to change its direction. Use the space-bar/left button to accelerate.

#### **Eating**

Orbs are scattered at random throughout the arena. Also, when a snook dies it drops all of the orbs it ate along the area it used to occupy. Eating orbs makes your snook bigger (mass increases) and adds to your score. Mass/score matters because of two reasons. The first is that you need it to accelerate (when you're hunting other snooks or maneuvering to avoid them). The second is that if your score drops to zero, you die. Further down we elaborate on how that can happen. 

![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Cpmlntayq0YKk3lrpd8eH1xjw0oNa0n-ySpibYA1gWy5XX9aRiwv1jA3sJo0Behxz_vf_7RwvAsM8Yj9hzwwqXw8_smnn71qJPpeeTZnbiLCFWg0G-u5BJkj0O7t8eoFNd79mX7LbBJmN8rXtQ)

#### **Killing**

If a snook’s head touches your snook’s body, it dies.

![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/6iMTu1PU9Xj-Oxq8xhTj2M8zWCAwr0MlQQA4j5zD6MLTvxZzB5PB9OKcxTj5tK-_2jGyFDMYexXcxHNPy4XIwrQDLi-5Fe8MsWm9wb03gmMOnpD9XGy5HSZE53qo7ACN2py87GbgZYcL-eLQMg)

#### **Dying**

First, we should discern between losing a life and dying. As we mentioned above, each snook is minted with 5 lives. When you die in the game and your snook still has lives, you are ejected from the match, but it is still playable. Only once the snook dies for the fifth time is it “All Dead” (and even then, Miracle Max can bring it back to life). Anyway, putting aside the post-mortem, the in-game experience is the same. Other than being killed by another snook, there are two other ways in which a snook can die. The first is if its score/mass goes down to zero. This could happen in the Red Zone (or if you curl up like a woose).  The second is colliding into the arena border.

![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/grn-y1qLvV-B6RNrPkaf37E6iWsc-HUxEXyOAH9xapVvnQZRcplEstYxDoBQbePBICOuq6CsJqpTxievvQJ9OmT202SVRDd0omgzeQnwz5eVGxYvRqV95aNBPUcioDXcuS3cl86uQShK_rzQTQ)


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