A month ago, when we first covered App Craft Studio’s Retro Widget that gave the iPhone and Apple Watch a Nokia make-under using iOS 14's widget tools, we lamented that for two bucks it should have included Nokia’s classic Snake game, too. A month later, Retro Widget has been updated and our wishes have come true: Snake is now playable on both the iPhone and Apple Watch.
As part of the update, Retro Widget has been renamed Retro Widget 2 with a new icon in the App Store, but it includes the same functionality as the original—namely using widgets to make your modern devices look like a classic Nokia 3310 cellphone. The functionality was limited, aside from displaying battery life and signal strength using old-school pixelated graphics, which made paying two bucks for a sight gag kind of a hard sell.
Retro Widget 2, on the other hand, totally justifies its $2 price tag with a series of iOS 14 widgets that let you play Snake, quite possibly the first justification for carrying a cellphone with you everywhere. The game plays the same—your simple goal is to guide a snake around the screen to gobble up power-ups that extend its length without crossing your own body—but instead of a keypad the iPhone lets you play with gestures while the Apple Watch version lets you play by rotating the Digital Crown.
If you bought the original version, Retro Widget 2 is a free upgrade and finally worth putting back on your mobile devices. I can’t imagine I’m the only person who bought the original only to delete it a few days later once the novelty worn off. The new version, however, is a keeper.