Aether Tail started from a question: what if the snake game kept its rules, but the board itself had one new idea? Each board after Classic adds one, and Fusion adds them all.
Moving freely
Classic moves cell by cell. Every other board on the home screen moves freely in any direction: a swipe sets the exact angle, and the head turns towards it in a smooth arc. The snake starts with 12 segments and grows by 3 per pellet. Its speed starts at 4.6 board units a second and rises with every pellet, reaching its top speed of 8 at the 38th.
Elastic: a ribbon with momentum
The head turns faster than on the other boards, but it carries momentum: it slows by up to 45% into a sharp turn and surges back out of it. Over the body hangs a silk ribbon on springs, stiff at the neck and loose at the tail. On a straight line it rides along; on a sharp bend it swings out and whips.
The body itself always follows the head exactly, so crashes stay predictable. The whip is about scoring: a pellet eaten mid-whip scores 15 instead of 10.
Chroma: mixing pigments
The board is three translucent zones, one for each of the theme's pigments, meeting in the middle. Crossing into a zone picks up its pigment. Holding one, the new pigment joins it; holding two already, you start over with just the new one. The head is drawn in the mix you're carrying.
Each pellet asks for one of six mixes: a single pigment (1, 2 or 3), worth 10, or a pair (1+2, 1+3 or 2+3), worth 25. Only a head carrying exactly that mix can eat it. Every pellet sits in a zone of its own mix, so there's always a way to it.
Every theme's pigments differ in lightness as well as hue (one dark, one middle, one light), so you can tell them apart with any kind of color blindness. Numbers on dots, in Settings → Gameplay, labels them too.
Constellation: shedding nodes
Every fifth pellet, the tip of your tail becomes a glowing node and the snake gets 6 segments shorter, so the board never fills up. Nodes pull your head gently towards them when you pass close, and never end the run. Consecutive nodes are joined by threads; crossing a thread weaves it for 15 points and plays that node's note.
Resonance: eating on the beat
The board pulses to a beat that starts at 92 beats a minute and rises by 1.5 with each pellet, reaching 132 at the 27th. A pellet eaten within 0.16 seconds of a beat builds your combo, up to ×5; off the beat, it resets.
That window is the same width at every tempo, so the beat gets easier to hit as it speeds up:
| Tempo | Time between beats | Share of the time that's on the beat |
|---|---|---|
| 92 a minute | 0.65 s | 49% |
| 132 a minute | 0.45 s | 70% |
Every beat also plays a note of a two-octave pentatonic scale: the higher your head on the board, the higher the note. Moving composes the music.
Fusion: everything at once
Fusion uses every rule above together: elastic movement, pigment zones, shed nodes and the beat. Carry the right mix, weave your threads, and stack the whip bonus with the beat combo for the biggest scores.
And the seventh?
There's one more board, and it isn't on the home screen. Settings → About → The boards will tell you when it's still hidden. We'll leave the rest to you.
New to the game? Start with how to grow longer in Classic.