📋 Blog & Changelog

Many people have asked how to survive longer. Here is everything we know.

1. Understand what you're dealing with.
Your snail moves at 0.05 km/h. This is the real, documented average speed of a garden snail. It is extremely slow. You will feel like this is not a real threat. This feeling is the first mistake.

2. Stay calm.
Panic will not slow the snail. The snail does not respond to your emotional state. It responds only to your GPS coordinates, which it already has.

3. Move house.
This is statistically the most effective strategy available. Moving 50+ km away adds roughly 40 days to your survival time. We recommend doing this immediately and without telling the snail.
Note: The snail will find out.

4. Do not look at the app.
This will not slow the snail. The snail is not checking whether you are looking. It does not know what a phone is. It simply moves.

5. Consider your sleep schedule.
You sleep approximately 8 hours a day. The snail does not sleep. While you were unconscious last night, it moved 400 metres closer. You were not aware of this. The snail was.

6. Going on holiday?
Congratulations. You have moved further away. The snail is still at home, moving toward where you were. When you return, it will be closer than when you left. This is not a warning. This is just information.

7. Do not attempt to reason with the snail.
The snail has no ears. It has no interest in your circumstances. Your explanations about being "very busy at work" or "going through a difficult time" will not be received. The snail will continue to move.

8. Your friends cannot help you.
They can only watch. Some of them, it should be noted, have sent additional snails. If you have enemies, be aware that they can also do this.

9. The snail has a name.
This should not matter. It does, somehow, matter.

10. There is no ending.
There is only distance, and time, and the snail.

Good luck. The snail doesn't believe in luck. But you're going to need it.

The idea started with a thought experiment. Imagine you were assigned a snail. It knows exactly where you are — always. It moves toward you at 0.05 km/h. The actual average speed of a garden snail. It never sleeps. Never stops. Never forgets.

In theory, you could always stay ahead of it. It's a snail. But the question that nagged at me was: would you? Could you maintain that gap — not for a day, not for a week — but forever? For the rest of your life?

The answer, I think, is no. Eventually you'd let your guard down. Eventually it would get close enough to feel real.

I built Snail Survivor to make that feeling real.

Your phone's GPS sends your location to the snail. The snail moves toward you. Always. The app runs in the background while you live your life — while you work, eat, sleep, go on holiday. The snail doesn't care. It's coming.

Most people survive a few days. Some survive a week. The longest current run is still going.

There's a prize for the first person to survive 100 days. Nobody has claimed it yet.

That's either because it's hard. Or because the snail always wins eventually.

I genuinely don't know which.

A big quality-of-life update shipping alongside the initial launch:

• Anonymous snail sending — send a snail without revealing your identity. The recipient sees ??? on their map and can't get revenge.
• Shareable profile links — tap 🔗 Share Profile in the Friends tab to generate a link. Anyone who taps it gets a prompt to add you instantly.
• Friend request push notifications — when someone adds you, you'll get an instant notification instead of only finding out next time you open the app.
• Leaderboard links — scroll to the bottom of the Leaderboard tab to open the live world map and Graveyard directly from the app.
• Speed difficulty — replaced distance-based difficulty with snail speed. Choose from Classic (0.05 km/h) to Doomed (1 km/h).
• 40 snail names — your snail gets a randomly assigned name with a bio. Tap the snail on the map to read its tragic backstory.

It's out. A real snail is hunting you.

Snail Survivor launched on iOS today. Download it, start a session, and watch a snail — randomly named or named by you — slowly and inevitably make its way toward your exact GPS location.

At launch you can:

• Start a survival run with a snail spawned near your location
• Track it in real time on the map
• Name your snail or let the app randomly assign one — then tap it on the map to read its bio
• Get nightly push notifications with the snail's distance
• Earn badges for surviving 1h, 6h, 24h, a week, a month
• Send a snail to a friend (or enemy) — they don't even need the app yet
• Compete on the global leaderboard

The snail moves at 0.05 km/h. The real average speed of a garden snail. It never stops. Neither should you.

💰 Be the first to survive 100 days and there's a prize. First to 200 and 300 days too. We're not joking. If you make it, we'll be in touch.