Game Localisation — How Snake '97 Supports 45+ Languages

From Arabic to Vietnamese — internationalising a game for a global audience.

Snake '97 is played in over 100 countries and supports 45+ languages — including right-to-left scripts like Arabic and Hebrew. Here's how one developer localised a game for the entire world.

Localisation in Snake '97 goes beyond translating menu strings. The game adapts its UI layout for right-to-left languages, adjusts font rendering for CJK characters, and handles the dozens of edge cases that arise when a single-developer game reaches a global audience.

The translation workflow: each language is a simple key-value file. Community contributors submit translations through a lightweight process — no professional translation agency, just players who love the game and speak the language.

The biggest challenge: fitting translated text into UI elements designed for English. German words are longer. Japanese characters need different line heights. Arabic reverses the entire layout direction.

With 40 million installs across 100+ countries, even a 1% mistranslation affects hundreds of thousands of players.

From Willem's full Snake '97 story.