Mr And Mrs Snake

SNAKE in 3D

About

A variant of the computer game classic SNAKE: three-dimensional and in third-person perspective for Android smartphones. The aim is to collect apples that appear at random while avoiding the own snake body as well as the boundaries of the playing field. With each snack eaten, the snake’s body grows by another body part, making maneuvering more difficult over time. The player can choose from four different snake characters (female green/blue, male green/blue). The movement of the snake can be controlled with a joystick on the left, the camera rotation can be controlled by swiping the screen.

Project Details

Period
Team Size
Platform
Game Engine
Unity Service
IDEs
Programming Languages
3D Graphics
2D Grpahics
Video Editor

03/2021 – 03/2021
1
Android
Unity 3D (2020.3.7f1)
Unity Analytics
Visual Studio, RStudio
C#, R
Blender (2.92.0)
Gimp (2.10.22)
DaVinci Resolve (17.0)

Period:  03/2021 – 03/2021
Team Size:  1
Platform: Android
Game Engine:  Unity 3D (2020.3.7f1)
IDEs:  Visual Studio, RStudio
Programming Languages:  C#, R
3D Graphics:  Blender (2.92.0)
2D Graphics:  Gimp (2.10.22)
Video Editor:  DaVinci Resolve (17.0)

Project Description

The game was developed by me in the university course ‚Human-computer interaction part 2‘. Creating a game was one of several possible submissions to pass the course alongside an online exam held during the pandemic.

The game was originally supposed to be a group project, but the other three of my group members dropped out, so I decided to develop a small game on my own. It was a relatively spontaneous action, so I only had two weeks, but since I already had experience with Unity and Blender, I wanted to give it a try.

Gameplay

  • At the beginning, player can choose male / female snake character
  • Goal: Maneuver the snake across the playfield while collecting randomly appearing apples, each worth one point (third-person perspective)
  • Ultimate goal: Get as high a score as possible
  • Difficulty: Snake body continues to grow with every eaten snack (freedom of movement is increasingly restricted and tactical action is required)
  • Game Over: When the edge of the field or the own snake body is touched

Controls

The camera can be rotated to get a better viewing angle: by steering the snake in a certain direction with the left hand, the right hand is free to rotate the camera. This makes it possible to develop the right strategy for further action while looking around for the apple and maneuvering the snake.

Left joystick
Touchscreen

Move the snake
Rotate the camera

Game Play Video

Not for my studies, but because I’m a fan of making short video clips, I recorded my playing on my smartphone and made a video out of it using DaVinci Resolve.

3D models on Sketchfab

I uploaded the 3D models to Sketchfab to make them available to others. Check them out:

Development

3D Modeling

As the game progressed in programming, I came up with ideas that could make SNAKE even more interesting, so I designed different snake characters: with accessories and colors, the player has the possibility to personalize the snake character. I chose a hat for the male snake and a hair bow for the female snake. The snake’s body color can be either light green or light blue.

Game Analysis

According to the specifications of my university course, the implemented game should also be analyzed using R and R-Studio. I decided among other things to log the player’s survival time, the number of apples collected and the object that was collided with (the reason the game ended) to do some simple statistical calculations.

For this purpose, I took my first steps with the integrated Unity Analytics service and played the game several times on my mobile phone to simulate different players.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the time I had for the project was very short, otherwise I would have liked to add other features that would have made the game even more interesting:
  • Increasing difficulty over time: obstacles or an increased movement speed of the snake
  • Different types of snacks providing different numbers of points
  • Different levels with different environments
  • Achievements that the player can earn
  • Ranking system with other players