games

Games

Six mini-games live in lib/GAMES/, launched from Menu → Games. They run as carousel overlays (CarouselManager::activateGame) — the underlying carousel screen stops ticking/animating while a game is active (only background housekeeping like the status bar, idle-sleep and input polling keep running) and every tick/button routes to the game instead, until it exits. Eye LEDs are suppressed while a game is on screen.

Framework (GameElement)

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> IDLE: activateGame → init()
    IDLE --> PLAYING: OK (onStart)
    IDLE --> [*]: CANCEL (clearGame)
    PLAYING --> GAME_OVER: endGame(result)
    PLAYING --> [*]: CANCEL
    GAME_OVER --> PLAYING: OK (restart)
    GAME_OVER --> [*]: CANCEL

Loading

GameElement (base class) provides:

• Idle/title screen with per-game splash art (drawSplashArt(), top ~30 px) and a blinking "OK start / CANCEL exit" hint.
• Score screen on endGame(msg) — shows _score and an optional result message; OK restarts, CANCEL leaves.
• Subclass contract: onStart() (reset state), onTick(now) (frame), onInput(button) (game keys). The base class already consumes OK/CANCEL in IDLE/GAME_OVER states.

The panic-stop key (FUNC_1_DOWN) still works during games — it is handled by the carousel before input routing.

The games

Game	Menu label	Play mechanics (keys = right joystick — games receive GEM_KEY_UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT/OK, the same channel as every other screen; the left joystick's FUNC keys are swallowed by the carousel while a game is active, except panic stop)
GameDino	Dino Runner	Endless runner: jump (with grace window) and duck under birds; speed ramps up
GameSnake	Snake	25×10 grid, 3 lives (running into a border or yourself costs a life and resets the snake, doesn't end the run outright); step timer speeds up as you eat
GameBreakout	Breakout	Paddle + bricks
GameConnect4	Connect 4	You vs. a built-in AI (win-if-possible → block-player-win → center-preference heuristic) on a 7-column board
GameInvaders	Invaders	5×3 alien grid marching, player ship + single bullet
GameWumpus	Hunt Wumpus	Classic dodecahedron cave (20 rooms), 5 arrows, pits/bats/wumpus clues; cursor picks one of 3 tunnels, shoot mode toggles

All games draw with Adafruit_GFX primitives at text size 1 into the shared 100×48 canvas and flush with updateWholeScreen().

Screenshots

Pixel-accurate renderings of each game's title, in-game and game-over screens, generated by tools/lcd_render (a host-side reimplementation of Adafruit_GFX driven by the real draw-call sequences — see that folder's render_all.py for how to regenerate these after a UI change).

Dino Runner

Snake

Breakout

Connect 4

Invaders

Hunt Wumpus

Adding a game

1. Subclass GameElement, implement onStart/onTick/onInput (+ optional drawSplashArt).
2. Instantiate it in main.cpp and register before carousel.begin(): menuEl.addGame(&myGame, "My Game");
3. MenuElement::MAX_GAMES is 7 (already bumped from 6 for game_tiltmaze.cpp, which exists in lib/GAMES/ but is currently commented out of registration in main.cpp — not reachable from the menu) — raise it further if you add another.

A lazy-loading scheme (placement-new on launch) was evaluated and rejected: it would only save ~500 B of static RAM and adds lifetime-management risk.