Nine small games, free, no account, nothing to install. You play one for two minutes on your phone and you come away holding a verse — whole, exact, and sitting under a button that takes you into the chapter it came from.
Scripture is never the question in any of them. Scripture is the prize.
And we did not put the Word at the end of a game because it made a tidy reward. We did it because of who the Word is about:
Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
John 5:39
Every verse you catch in these games is testifying of Jesus. That is the whole reason they exist. Not to make you clever about the Bible — to put you in front of the One the Bible is about, for two minutes, on a Tuesday, while you were only meaning to play something.
Because He loved us first
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8
That is the thing we want everybody to run into. Not a rule, not a scolding, not a test you can fail — a love that came looking for us before we ever thought to look for Him. We love him, because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).
So there is nothing in here that can tell you that you got God wrong. You gather words, you finish a verse, and the verse is handed back to you whole. That is it.
His Word is a delight, so why not play in it
O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.
Psalm 34:8
Somewhere along the way reading the Bible got filed under duty. But listen to how the people in it actually talk about the Word:
How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Psalm 119:103). More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold (Psalm 19:10). Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart (Jeremiah 15:16).
Sweet. Desirable. Joy. That is not duty language. So if a snake game on your phone is what puts one of those sentences in front of somebody today, we will happily build the snake game.
And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.
Colossians 3:17
Whatsoever ye do. That includes this.
The nine
Every one of them is endless, every one of them rolls into a new verse when you finish the one you are on, and every one of them ends the same way — the verse whole, the engraving if that chapter has one, and a button into the chapter.
GATHER
Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
Psalm 119:11
Snake, except the tail is the verse. One word at a time, in order, and the sentence assembles behind you as you go. Hiding the Word in your heart is not something that happens to you. You go and pick it up, a piece at a time, and carry it.
UNCOVER
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:12
An engraving sits behind forty-two tiles. Knock them away and it comes out from underneath, a piece at a time. 419 plates — 214 by Gustave Doré and 205 by Virgil Solis — each paired with the exact verse the artist cut it for.
MANNA
And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted.
Exodus 16:21
Words come down several at a time, each carrying the next of the chapter, and you slide the basket and gather them in their turn. You cannot hold all of them at once, so you have to choose — which is the passage, not a game idea dressed up over it. Manna could not be hoarded. It came every morning, and it taught people to receive today what they needed today.
THE NARROW WAY
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Matthew 7:14
You fly it, and every gate you pass hands you the next word. The gap tightens as you go, because a narrow way that stayed wide would be a different verse. Worth knowing: the King James strait is not straight — it means tight, constricted, the same word behind straitened. Narrow and easy to miss.
THE WIDE SEA
So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.
Psalm 104:25
Hold to rise, release to sink. Gather the small fish carrying the verse; the great ones will have you, unless you come down on top of one. That last rule is not ours either — Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces (Psalm 74:14), written down about three thousand years before anyone thought to put it in a side-scroller.
PUTT
Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.
Proverbs 4:25–26
Read the line, drag back, let go. Sink it and the next word is yours, a fresh hole is laid, and you get strokes back. Run out of strokes and the round is over — which is so fight I, not as one that beateth the air (1 Corinthians 9:26). A wasted stroke is beating the air, and you only have so many.
THE RACE
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
Hebrews 12:1
Tap high to go over, hold low to go under. And the obstacles are not decoration — they are the verse, split in two. The weights sit on the track and you lay them aside by going over. The things that beset hang low and you go under. We did not reach for that. It is what the sentence says.
QUENCH
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
Ephesians 6:16
The fiery darts come down in ranks. You slide the shield along the bottom, and the Word goes up on its own and quenches them — because of the very next verse: and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17). What you send up at them is Scripture.
There is nothing human on that screen, and that is not squeamishness on our part. It is the passage four verses earlier: we wrestle not against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12). Just darts, and the Word putting them out.
THE BREASTPLATE
And Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the holy place, for a memorial before the LORD continually.
Exodus 28:29
Six kinds of stone on a board of forty-two. Slide one onto the stone beside it, set three of a kind, and a word of the verse is set into the line. Twelve stones were cut and named and fixed in gold, and Aaron carried them over his heart every time he went in — not decoration. A memorial. The names of the people, worn on the heart, before the LORD, continually.
Which is where we are standing right now, because the High Priest carrying us in is not Aaron: Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them (Hebrews 7:25). Aaron went in once a year, with stones. Jesus went in once, for ever, and He has not come back out — and your name is on His heart while you sit there sliding tiles around.
Three translations
A switch at the top of the menu: KJV, BSB (Berean Standard Bible) and RVR (Reina-Valera 1909, in Spanish). Flip it and the verses, the chapters and the plate captions all come through in that translation. Because a game whose reward is His Word should not quietly require you to read English, or one particular English.
And then go and read the chapter
Whatever your score, every run ends with a verse set the way this site sets Scripture, the engraving if that chapter has one, and a button that says READ THE CHAPTER.
That button is the point. The arcade is a doorway, not a destination. Nobody learns the Bible by playing snake, and we have never pretended otherwise. The hope is smaller and, we think, truer: somebody who was not going to open a Bible today plays for two minutes, meets one verse whole, and follows it in — and there finds Christ, because He is what the whole book is about.
And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
Luke 24:27
All the scriptures. The things concerning Himself. That is what is hiding in a falling word and a broken tile.
Great is the LORD
Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.
Psalm 145:3
We get to make little games out of His words. He is not diminished by that for a second. His greatness is unsearchable, and He is kind enough to meet people in small things — a two-minute game on a phone, on a bus, in a waiting room.
If one person meets Jesus through a snake game, it was worth every hour.
Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our LORD: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength.
Nehemiah 8:10
Eat the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared. That is a fair description of giving something good away for free to people you will never meet.
Where they are
xtraamerican.com/games — free, no account, no download. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app. There is a sound switch up top, off until you ask for it.
They sit beside the rest of the free things here: XA Daily, the Psalms, the King James text, the Doré engravings and the Solis woodcuts.
Every verse is checked against the King James text on this server before it can reach you. If you find one that does not match your Bible, tell us and we will fix it the same day.