Who has not played the historic Snake game on Nokia mobile phones. Still, to this very day, people of all ages will have heard of Snake – they might have even played the original, or know an older person who has. I myself was addicted to the game back in my childhood. Though modern games have advanced user interfaces and better graphics, I still miss that excitement while playing them. I always wanted to recreate that excitement and feeling, Thanks to the programming languages which allow us to build such cool stuffs.
The project aims to build a simple snake game using Python and an Open-source cross-platform library called Pygame. Though the project does not include all the functionalities of the game, It develops a simple game which is controlled by arrow keys on the keyboard. The game also records the users best score. It displays users current score on the window. Though its just a basic game it is good for beginners to get hands on experience with python and the pygame library.
Though there are plenty of tutorials on the Internet on building the Snake Game, One unique feature of this project is that the game is made capable to store users best score. This feature makes use of a txt file which is read and overwritten each time the user's current game score is higher than previous best score. Initially the score is set to 0 in a txt file. This txt file has to be in the same folder/directory where the .py file is stored. I took the game prototype form here. The author has given a detailed explanation on how to implement a snake game using python from scratch. I recommend you to check it once.
Structure of my github repository for snake game is as follows,
- Previous .py files - This is folder contains the .py files which i worked on while implementing the project. It's contents can be treated as versions from beginning prototype till final implementation.
- best_score.txt - This txt file keeps track of users best score.
- game_over.png - this image is displayed when the game ends.
- README.md - This markdown file contains details about the project.
- snake_game.py - This is the main .py which implements the game.
- snake.gif - This gif shows a final implementation of the game.
- Welcome.png - This image is displayed at the start of the game.
Note: Before you try to run the game make sure you have installed pygame library using the below command.
pip install pygame.
To run the game you have to download the Snake Game folder or copy each of the files in Snake_Game folder to a folder on you local machine. If required make the changes in snake_game.py to load the images. Run the snake_game.py file using the below command.
python snake_game.py
