WINMAMBA

One of those games that almost nobody remembers today, even though practically everyone who had a computer with DOS at home had it on a floppy disk back then. WinMamba from 1993 was the simplest thing you could do with a snake: movement through space, collecting things, you can't collide with yourself. A clone of the classic Snake on PC, where computer graphics were just learning to walk.

You play as a snake that moves on a grid field and swallows dots. Each swallowed dot extends it by one segment. Simple and important rule: if you hit yourself, it's over. Sounds boring, but that was exactly the charm of the nineties. The game gave you the ability to choose a bunch of parameters that today you'll find only in modern indie games: playing field size, speed, number of dots to collect, computer opponent behavior. You could set your own difficulty level yourself.

You control the snake with arrow keys, and that's all. No sounds, no epic graphics orgies. Just a square field, your snake line and dots to eat. WinMamba wasn't ambitious in the slightest, but that's exactly where its charm lay. It was like taking paper and a pencil — straightforward, addictive, and once you started, it was hard to stop.

Today it looks like the most boring thing under the sun, but that's age talking. Back then it was the ideal game for a break from work and ideal for competing with coworkers over the high score. It's not a name that brings anything back to you, but when you fire it up again, you remember everything. Simple, hopelessly boring to look at, but damn addictive to play.

Fire up WinMamba on a retro evening or when you want something that will play itself. It's not a game that burdens you with story or setup. It reminds you of times when computer entertainment didn't have to be complicated. It was enough to sit down, turn off your brain and watch your snake grow.