Snake and Tetris Game (Challenge #1)

tetris
snake starting picture

Inspiration

One typical school day last year, we were bored in class and decided to play some games. Out of habit, we opened some of games and sent an invite link to our friends. Over half of our friends couldn't play because they didn't have the money to buy the account. This caused us to be really sad because we wanted to enjoy some time with them. Many games are designed for people that have money and speak English. However, we think that everyone should be able to have fun, despite their language and income. Thus, we decided to program Tetris and Snake, which can be access by everyone on the internet for free, and does not require English to understand.

What it does

Snake and Tetris are common games that most people know of. Snake is a game where you control a snake by leading it to apples without touching the border or itself. Tetris is a game where you arrange shapes to fill a board.

How I built it

We didn't have much time, so both Snake and Tetris are built with a similar format using array backed grids. Each number in the grid is associated with a color to fill in the cell. Each frame, the grid is changed depending on the users input. Using frame by frame, we were able to create the illusion of blocks falling and the snake moving.

Challenges I ran into

One challenge that we faced was overestimating certain projects. We are still novices when it comes to programming and have much to learn. Some of our ideas, while good, were simply unachievable in a day for us. We had to come to the reality that we needed less elaborate projects in order to succeed and learn.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud of being able to learn pygame and create the games Tetris and Snake in the amount of time given. Even though we ran into multiple challenges, such as not being able to pursue our more complex ideas, we were still able to finish the games in time through Pygame, something we haven't used before.

What I learned

A big part of today was learning about functions and Pygame. While we had seen functions before, this was our first time implementing it in a big project. We were shocked to learn how useful functions really are. Originally, we weren't going to use functions because they weren't necessary. However, I am glad that we did. Functions made the code more organized and efficient. We learned that sometimes, it is important to take the harder route because it will make your life easier in the future. Initially, it was difficult to use functions, but at the end, it made our code easier and better.

What's next for Snake and Tetris Game

We are going to make our Snake and Tetris games more complex, such as adding more blocks for the Tetris, adding effects to the snake, and more. To address the elephant in the room, Snake and Tetris can already be found online, defeating the purpose of making it free. However, this is the first step for many more to come. We plan on making more complex games with Pygame for others to play without having to read complex instructions, pay money, or watch ads. We will also try to encourage companies to make their games more friendly for people who speak other languages.