I told Opera Neon to remaster Snake for today's gamers and here's how it went

A few days ago, the lovely people at Opera gave me a peek into its new product, Neon. Right now, they're hard at work getting it out of the testing phase, but I really enjoyed what I saw. They showed me the ropes and what Opera Neon's AI can do, and they even gave some examples when I asked for them. They were kind enough to give me a developer build, featuring the AI tools within the Opera Neon shell.

So, I did what everyone would have done in my position. I very sensibly and deliberately experimented with the tools offered to me to gauge how powerful the models were. Then I went off the rails and asked it to do silly stuff to see how well it could keep up. You know, the usual.

Wait, what's Opera Neon again?

Before we get stuck in...

Opera Neon is the company's big foray into AI. Right now, the company is hard at work getting everything set up, and interested parties have to sign up for a waitlist to be let in. However, despite still being in testing, the tools work just fine.

The main draw for Opera Neon is its three AI modes: Neon Chat, Neon Do, and Neon Make. Neon Chat works just like a regular chatbot, and Neon Do allows you to ask the browser to perform jobs for you. During my Opera demo, the presenter said his "hello world" version of showing what Neon Do can do is to ask it to purchase socks from Amazon and stop it before it gets to the checkout phase. Unfortunately, he confirmed he had received a surprise package of 32 socks because he hadn't stopped the AI process in time during a demo.

However, for this article, I'll be using Neon Make. This one is the meat and potatoes of Opera Neon's AI tools, allowing you to ask it to create apps, websites, and code for you. Because it runs on a cloud server, you can close Opera Neon and come back to it later to see how the AI is faring. Plus, Neon can give you the source code to download and publish the code on a web server so you can run it and share it with others.

For this piece, I'm going to ask Neon Make to make Snake to see if it's up to the task. If it can, I'll then ask it to make a new version to appeal to modern audiences. And if you're wondering what that even entails, don't worry; I don't either. That's the fun part!

Getting Opera Neon to make the normal version of Snake

Start from the beginning

Before we ask Opea Neon to make a Snake remaster, I wanted to see if it could generate a really simple, basic version of the game. Not only that, but I wanted it to describe what it was doing and teach me how I could make my own version of Snake. And, of course, I wanted to use that publishing feature of Neon Make to see what it can do. So, I gave it this prompt:

Please program a simple Snake game and write a guide on how to program it. Publish it to the web.

What I didn't expect Neon Make to do was publish an entire guide on how to create Snake, but that's exactly what it did. Some of the visuals were weird, and the "final source code" section seems to end prematurely, but the individual chapters looked fine. Best of all, at the very bottom was a fully functional version of Snake, which had all the features you'd expect.

Making the "remastered" version of Snake

Reinventing the wheel

Alright, so now we know that Neon Make can make Snake, but can it improve on the formula? For my next prompt, I simply said this:

This game works great, thank you! Now, I want you to add new elements to this game to make Snake more appealing to a modern audience.

Now, I fully understand that if I asked this of a human programmer, they'd just throw their hands up in the air and demand details as to what "make Snake more appealing to a modern audience" even means. But that's exactly why I asked Neon Make to do it, because I wanted to see where it would take things without any of my input.

When I hit Enter, Neon Make's cogs began turning. For context, you can see what the AI is "thinking about" in a progress panel on the right. After I sent the command, it began unpacking what on Earth I meant when I said "modern audience." Eventually, it landed on the idea that the game needed power-ups, a UI enhancement, and most surprisingly, compatibility for both desktop and mobile controls. I guess when it saw the term "modern audience," it thought of people playing it on their phones, too.

So, how did Neon Make fare? Well, I'm happy to announce that it did a lot better than I assumed it would. The new version of Snake for gamers in 2025 has four difficulty levels, which adjust speed and board size; the harder the difficulty, the faster the snake goes and the larger the playing field gets.

Not only that, but Neon Make also added three new power-ups. One of them will double the score you earn when eating food, one of them will speed you up a little, and one will make you invulnerable to "damage." If you try to "eat yourself" while invulnerable, you just go through yourself; likewise, hitting a wall has you wrap around and appear on the other side instead of losing. Each powerup has a duration, and you can see the timer at the top of the HUD.

Of course, there's a fully-functional leaderboard which registers your score, but only if you score about zero, which is an interesting consideration the AI took into account. Plus, there's even a pause and restart button, which I didn't ask for, but I'm glad it added.

Best of all, because it was published on the web, you can give it a go yourself. Just head over to my Modern Snake Game Neon Make page and see how high you can score.

Opera Neon is a dab hand at making a modern-day Snake

Overall, I was very pleased with Opera Neon's Make tool. It was great giving the AI a prompt, closing the browser window, then coming back later to see what the cloud PC had cooked up for me. However, I think I'll stop taking Opera's AI models for a ride and doing silly things with them until the developers have them properly right and ready for public use. Until then, count me in as a fan.