Image: PlayStation Studios
To celebrate the Year of the Snake, here are five snake-themed games you should play.
Snakes. These lengthy, rope-like, limbless reptiles are enjoying their time in the sun in 2025 - also known in the zodiac calendar as the Year of the Snake. As the world gears up to celebrate Chinese New Year on January 29 this year, it would behoove those who celebrate the holiday to keep the snake in mind - and there are plenty of ways to do so in the world of video games alone.
Serpents have been portrayed in the games industry in many different ways over the last few decades, from recurring boss-type enemies like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice’s the Great Serpent to more personable protagonists like Snake Pass’ Noodle. Here are five snake-themed games you can play to celebrate the Year of the Snake:
Any Metal Gear Solid game
This can be as complicated or as simple as you’d like. We’ll start with the complicated: there are technically five characters referred to as Snake in the Metal Gear Solid franchise: Big Boss, Solid Snake, Liquid Snake, Solidus Snake, and Venom Snake. Venom Snake is the latest entry to this list of confusingly affixed individuals, first introduced in Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain. We’d go into each of these characters’ biographies here, but one could write a book on that subject alone.
Instead, we’ll say this: much like a snake, each of these protagonists (and antagonists) move quickly and quietly, striking from the shadows for an effective, and perhaps final, hit. Solid Snake is an icon in gaming history, and no list of video game snakes would be complete without his presence gracing the list.
Snake
![](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/xz4G4uYxF5N6ZWWx2QMyLf-1280-80.jpg.webp)
Image: Nokia
Any list of snake video games would be woefully incomplete without the mention of one of the most iconic video games in mainstream pop culture: Snake. Originating from a 1976 arcade game called Blockade, Snake and Snake-like games typically have players navigate a small area as the end of a growing line - AKA, a snake. As the snake grows by eating more items (apples, eggs, or nondescript pixels), it grows in length, forcing the player to strategise in order to keep it from colliding with itself. After all, a snake mustn't eat its own tail.
Famously, a classic version of this Snake game came preloaded on Nokia mobile phones in 1998, providing many youthful gamers with their first taste of Snake. While Blockade wasn’t snake-themed to begin with, the genre has now become so closely associated with snakes that it might as well have been. If you’re looking for nostalgia this Year of the Snake, Snake is the obvious choice for you.
God of War (2018)
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Image: PlayStation Studios
There's a big ol’ snake in God of War (2018), and it's actually crucial to the plot! In Santa Monica Studio’s 2018 reboot of the brutal Greek mythology game franchise God of War, Kratos found himself in the realm of Nordic mythology with his son, Atreus, in tow. The father and son duo embarked on a journey to scatter the ashes of Atreus’ mother from the tallest cliff in all the realms. This journey eventually brought them into an almost-deadly meeting with Jormungandr, the world serpent, who is said to one day wrap itself around the entire world.
Meeting Jormungandr for the first time is a breathtaking experience that is bound to stick with any player, long after they have completed the game. Covered in moss and an assortment of sea life, this gargantuan serpent has slumbered in Midgard for eons, and awakening it - and hearing it speak for the first time - is a true feast for the eyes and ears.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
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Image: Bethesda Softworks
It’s no secret that Indiana Jones hates snakes, but this particular game really puts him through the wringer for it. As the 1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade demonstrated, Indy owes his ophidiophobia to a brutal run-in with a circus train full of snakes in his youth. That gave him a deadly fear of snakes, which sadly comes up for the archeologist time upon time again in various adventures across film, TV and video games.
In Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Jones has to conquer his fears - or at least face them - on a much bigger scale than ever before. As he explores the waters of Sukhothai in search of a hidden pyramid, he encounters a massive python that threatens to put an end to his adventures for good. Throughout this story mission, the snake constantly reappears to make Indy’s life a living hell, culminating in a boss fight he’s not likely to forget anytime soon.
Any Pokemon game
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Image: The Pokemon Company International
Most Pokemon games are bound to feature a snake Pokemon, given how often the games’ design teams draw reference from these slithering creatures for new monster designs. The very first generation of Kanto Pokemon boasts the most famous example of a snake pokemon: Ekans, a purple serpent quite literally named ‘snake’, but written backwards. Ekans eventually evolves into a Pokemon named Arbok which is, again, just ‘kobra/cobra’ written backwards.
Other snake pokemon include Seviper, Dragonair, Serperior, Sandaconda, Silicobra, and many, many more. Why settle for just one snake depiction when Pokemon can give you every colour of the rainbow?