Snake scores more per feed at higher difficulty levels. The classic mistake is playing at the highest speed you can survive; play at the highest speed where every turn is still deliberate. Nine original levels plus three extras leave plenty of ladder to climb.
Long snakes die in open space. Sweep the field in an S-pattern, lane by lane, the way you would mow a lawn: your body stays packed in rows you have already left, and the food is always ahead of you, never behind your own tail.
Every turn near a wall removes options. Turn one block early, keep an exit lane along the border, and never enter a pocket your tail has not finished leaving.
Snake '97 keeps gameplay statistics on your device: course corrections, near deaths, distance travelled in real-world metres (one block of the original display is 1.6 mm). Many course corrections means you are steering reactively; near deaths trending down means your lines are getting cleaner. The 27 challenges, from Survivor to Legend, are a training arc in disguise.
Your high score cannot be reset, exactly like on the original phone. Whatever you set, you live with. That is the whole point.
Belgian artist Zena Van den Block collected her Snake '97 end-game screens for months and turned the final twists of the snake into glow-in-the-dark canvases, exhibited as "High Scores" at SECONDroom Antwerp. See the artwork in the making of Snake '97, or read the developer's full account on willem.com. Aim for an ending worth framing.