Snake Bash

The Snake Bash Game is a classic arcade-style game that you can play directly from your terminal.

  SNAKE BASH

  SCORE 3  |  BEST 7  |  FPS 10.0

  # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
  #                           #
  #       * * *               #
  #                           #
  #                       $   #
  #                           #
  # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

  arrows/4682 move  +/- speed  p pause
  r restart  q quit

How to play

To start the game, run the following command in your terminal:

npx snake-bash

If you install it as a global dependency you can use the shortcut snake-bash.

Control the snake

Use the arrow keys to move the snake, optionally:

• 4: move left
• 6: move right
• 8: move up
• 2: move down

Interact with the game

• + / -: speed the snake up or slow it down
• p or space: pause
• r: restart the game
• q or Ctrl+C: quit the game

Options

snake-bash --size 20        # a 20x20 board
snake-bash --size 15x40     # 15 rows, 40 columns
snake-bash --fps 15         # start faster
snake-bash --no-color       # plain output
snake-bash --help

Colours are also disabled automatically when the output is not a terminal, or when NO_COLOR is set.

The best score lasts for as long as the game is running and is deliberately never written to disk. Snake Bash reads no files, writes no files, opens no sockets and has no runtime dependencies, which is what makes it safe to drop onto a machine you care about and delete afterwards.

How it renders

Terminals flicker when a game blanks the screen and repaints it from scratch on every frame. Snake Bash never blanks the screen: it keeps the previous frame in memory, works out which lines actually changed, and rewrites only those, in place, as a single write to stdout. A frame where nothing moved costs no output at all.

The game also runs on the alternate screen buffer, so quitting gives you your prompt and scrollback back exactly as you left them, and the terminal is restored on every exit path, including Ctrl+C and unexpected errors.

How to customize

To customize this game, you can clone the repository and install the dependencies (linters and nothing else -- the game itself has zero runtime dependencies):

git clone https://github.com/gabrielmissio/snake-bash.git
cd snake-bash
npm install

You can then make changes to the code and run the game using:

npm start

Run the checks with:

npm test     # unit tests, via the built-in node:test runner
npm run lint

Set OUTPUT_MODE=DevelopmentOutput to get plain, escape-free frames, which is handy when piping the output somewhere or debugging the board state:

OUTPUT_MODE=DevelopmentOutput npm start

Layout

src/
  backgrounds/   the walls the board is built from
  components/    board, snake and target
  inputs/        raw keyboard reading and key decoding
  outputs/       frame composition, diffing renderer, terminal modes
  main/          game manager, loop, CLI entry point
  utils/         enums and small helpers

Requires Node.js 18 or newer.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.