🐍 Terminal Snake

A classic Snake game that runs in your terminal, built with Rust using ratatui and crossterm.

Features

• Clean terminal UI with centered game board
• WASD controls
• Progressive difficulty — snake speeds up as it grows
• Configurable grid size and game parameters
• Game over screen with final score
• Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/Vadym-Lopatka/terminal-snake.git
cd terminal-snake
cargo run --release

Controls

Key	Action
W	Move up
A	Move left
S	Move down
D	Move right
ESC	Quit game

Configuration

Edit the constants at the top of src/main.rs to customize the game:

const GRID_WIDTH: u16 = 20;          // Board width in cells
const GRID_HEIGHT: u16 = 20;         // Board height in cells
const INITIAL_SNAKE_LENGTH: usize = 3;
const BASE_TICK_MS: u64 = 200;       // Starting speed (lower = faster)
const MIN_TICK_MS: u64 = 50;         // Maximum speed cap
const SPEED_INCREASE_PER_FOOD: u64 = 5; // Speed increase per food eaten

Requirements

• Rust 1.70 or later
• A terminal with UTF-8 support

Dependencies

• ratatui — Terminal UI framework
• crossterm — Cross-platform terminal manipulation
• rand — Random number generation

Project Structure

snake_game/
├── Cargo.toml
└── src/
    └── main.rs    # All game logic in a single file

The entire game is contained in one file (~380 lines) for simplicity and readability.

How It Works

1. Game Loop: Uses a tick-based system where the snake moves at regular intervals
2. Input Handling: Non-blocking input polling with direction queuing to prevent 180° turns
3. Collision Detection: Checks for wall and self-collision each tick
4. Rendering: Redraws the entire game state each frame using ratatui's immediate mode rendering

Next steps

• Add arrow key support
• High score persistence
• Pause functionality
• Different game modes (wrap-around walls, obstacles)
• Color themes