Oh that's really interesting. I wonder if you could use principles of real snake movement to help influence that. I have a friend that makes segmented robots based on the types here: https://userweb.ucs.louisiana.edu/~brm2286/locomotn.htm, but it sounds quite challenging.
Viewing post in Loois the Looping Loopster jam comments
I actually tried that first, and some of it is still in the game. Mainly for aesthetic reasons. Each segment has a shift register storing the angle of the previous segment. Then each segment tries to "replay" the angle from the shift register buffer in relation to its previous segment. But that sadly did not work as expected. Maybe with some more tuning it could be done, but probably not for a 4-day game jam. I think it would be close to Sidewinding. When you see the tail of my "snake" bending up while bending the head, that is part of the effect. I left it in the game because the loopster felt more alive.