How power-ups work
Ordinary fruit — the small, medium and large kind — only adds weight. The glowing foods are different: each one grants a timed effect that lasts several seconds and then wears off. Four ground rules apply to all of them:
- Same-type effects stack. Eat two Speeds and you do not just refresh the timer — you get a stronger Speed (more on levels next).
- Different effects run at once. You can be regenerating, magnetised and sped-up all at the same time; they do not interfere with each other.
- They survive teleports. Jump through a portal or hit the manual teleport and your active effects come along for the ride.
- Death clears everything. When a run ends, the slate is wiped — you respawn with no effects.
Levels and the stacking system
This is the mechanic that makes power-ups deep. Each time you eat another of the same effect, its remaining time is topped up, and your level in that effect rises with how much time you have banked. Pile them up quickly and you climb to level 5, the cap; as the timer drains, the level steps back down again.
Higher levels mean stronger effects: a level-3 Magnet reaches further than a level-1, a level-3 Regeneration regrows you three times as fast, and so on. So when you spot a cluster of one type, hoovering all of it up before you do anything else is the single biggest habit that separates strong players from beginners.
The power-ups worth chasing
Regeneration — steady free growth for about ten seconds. Stack it for a fast, safe size boost, especially early in a run.
Speed — faster movement with no weight cost, around ten seconds. This is the free, sustainable speed (unlike dashing, which costs size). Great for repositioning, chasing, or fleeing.
Magnet — for roughly eight seconds, nearby fruit is pulled toward you, and higher levels widen the reach. Sensibly, it only drags in good food — it will not yank poison into your mouth. Park it over a dense fruit patch for a feeding frenzy.
Invincibility — about ten seconds where you pass through anything unharmed. It is also your best weapon (see the combos below). Rare, so spend it deliberately.
Invisibility — you fade toward see-through, and stacking makes you fainter still. You are not intangible — you can still crash and still be crashed into — but opponents struggle to read where your body actually is. A strong stealth and ambush tool.
Zoom Out — pulls the camera back for about ten seconds so you see more of the curving terrain. Genuinely useful when hunting or being hunted; it is pure information.
The ones to dodge (or survive)
Some glowing foods hurt you. The magnet politely refuses to pull any of these toward you, but you can still eat them by running over them — so steer around them on purpose.
- Poison — drains your weight over time, and stacking makes it bite harder. The clearest "do not touch" on the planet.
- Slowness — bogs you down for several seconds, usually exactly when you need to escape. It also cancels out an active Speed.
- Confused — inverts your turn controls for about six seconds. Do not panic-steer: brake and crawl in as straight a line as you can until it passes, or you will drive yourself into a wall of snake.
- Zoom In — shoves the camera in close and shrinks your view right when you want to see more. It cancels an active Zoom Out.
Mystery food
Roughly one in ten effect foods spawns disguised — it shows up as a mystery sprite instead of its real icon, and you only learn what it was when you eat it. It could be any effect, good or bad. That makes mystery food a gamble: a fine flutter when you are already safe and want a free roll, a bad idea in the middle of a fight where a sudden Confused or Slowness could end your run.
Cancellations and combos
A few effects are direct opposites and cancel each other out, which you can use on purpose:
- Speed ↔ Slowness — eating one neutralises the other. Caught by Slowness? A Speed pickup wipes it.
- Zoom Out ↔ Zoom In — the same deal for your camera distance.
And the combinations worth setting up deliberately:
- Magnet + a fruit cluster — sit in dense food with a stacked Magnet and balloon in size in seconds.
- Invincibility + aggression — for those few seconds you can drive straight through another snake. Line yourself up so they collide with your body and pop while you sail on untouched.
- Invincibility + teleport — because effects survive teleports, you can pop Invincibility, jump into a crowded area, and arrive still untouchable.
- Speed + dash — when you truly must be somewhere now, a stacked Speed plus a dash is the fastest you can move. Just remember the dash is still draining your weight.
What to grab first
When several power-ups are within reach and you cannot get them all, a rough priority order:
- Invincibility — rare and run-defining; almost always worth a detour.
- A cluster of any one good type — stacking to a high level beats grabbing one each of several different effects.
- Magnet — turns a fruit patch into fast, safe growth.
- Speed — free mobility to reach everything else.
- Regeneration / Zoom Out — solid, low-risk value when nothing better is near.
And always give the harmful glowing foods a wide berth, especially mid-fight.
That is the whole toolbox. See how it fits into a full run in the complete strategy guide, learn the pace controls in the movement guide, or jump straight into a world.