Dative case in subjects and titles

Question

Why is dative case used in the following for example:

месяцы в году
игры на снегу

There is no sentence, so how can there be an indirect object..

Answer 1

Although the word forms match dative letter-for-letter, the stress falls on another syllable, giving you a hint that something fishy is going on. Indeed, this is not dative: it is locative, one of a lesser-known cases of Russian nouns. According to Wikipedia, approximately 150 masculine nouns retain a distinct form for the locative case, used only after "в" and "на". These forms end in "-у́" or "-ю́" :

Лежать на снегу.

Стоять на краю.