Coil Run
About Coil Run
Coil Run is the growing worm game, played on a board twenty four cells across and eighteen down. Eat, get longer, and slowly run out of places to put yourself. It speeds up as you go and then stops speeding up, so the late game is about planning rather than reflexes. There is a second mode too, a race against a computer worm for the same food, where boxing your rival in counts just as much as eating faster than it does.
How to play
Steer with the touch pad or the arrow keys. You cannot stop and you cannot turn back on yourself, so the only question is which way to go next.
Rules of Coil Run
- The worm never stops moving, and a wall or your own body ends the run the moment you touch it, with no second chance.
- Every fruit adds one segment and one point, and in the solo run it also trims a little off the step time.
- The solo run starts at twelve hundredths of a second a step and speeds up by three thousandths a fruit, bottoming out at six hundredths after twenty fruit.
- Once you are past five points, a mint star turns up now and then. It is worth five points and two segments, and it disappears after six seconds.
- A turn straight back into your own neck is rejected, so a fumbled input costs you nothing.
- In versus the first worm to ten fruit wins, and a rival that crashes into a wall or a body loses on the spot.
- Versus runs at one fixed speed for both sides, with two fruit kept on the board and a short pause before a fresh one appears.
Controls
- The four arrow keys, and nothing else on the keyboard
- The on screen pad on a touchscreen, or a gamepad stick or d-pad
- Turning straight back on yourself is ignored rather than fatal
What makes it worth playing
- A board of twenty four by eighteen cells, big enough that a long body is a real maze
- A pink fruit that adds a segment and a point, and a mint star worth five that only appears once you are past five points
- A speed ramp that tops out after twenty fruit, so the late game holds one steady rhythm
- A versus mode against a computer worm, with two fruit on the board at once and a fixed shared speed
- Your best score kept between sessions
Screenshots
Captured from this build on 2026-09-14.
Tips from playing it
- Run the edges early and keep the middle clear. The middle is where you will need room later.
- Work out how you are getting back out before you go into a pocket for food. Going in is never the problem.
- Once you are long, following your own tail is always safe, because the cell it leaves is free by the time you reach it.
- The rival worm paths to the nearest reachable fruit and only falls back on open space when no path exists, so blocking its route is worth more than beating it to one apple. Cut across its front and it has to turn.
Why this game is here, and what we changed
Our worm has a face. Two googly eyes with pupils that lean into the turn, a tongue that flicks out of the front every few seconds, and a pair of crossed X marks where the eyes were once it hits something. Around it the board is deep plum with a violet frame, the worm gold, the fruit pink and the bonus star mint, which is a complete swap from the green on black everyone expects and far easier to follow at length. The bonus timer we did not touch. Six seconds with a draining ring is exactly enough to make you gamble.
More on how we pick and fix these: how we make our own editions of classic games and how we test a game.
- Category
- Arcade
- Plays in
- Your browser, no download
- Orientation
- Landscape
- Players
- Solo, or a head to head against the computer worm in versus.
- Difficulty
- The step time floors at six hundredths of a second after twenty fruit and never drops again, so what kills you at length is the room you left yourself rather than the pace.
- Typical session
- One to five minutes a run.
- Last tested by us
- 2026-09-14
