Greedy Snake

A terminal-based Snake game written in C with PDCurses. This project was built as a data structures course project and kept public as a small, complete systems-style program that demonstrates game loop design, state management, and array-based movement logic.

Demo

• Gameplay video: videos/screen_record.mp4

Highlights

• Built in C with a lightweight terminal UI
• Menu system, pause flow, about page, and mode selection
• Three speed modes: slow, medium, fast
• Score tracking and elapsed time display
• Wrap-around wall behavior
• Random food generation that avoids the snake body
• Cross-platform build path: bundled PDCurses for Windows, curses via CMake on Unix-like systems

Data Structure And Logic

This repository is worth showing publicly because the implementation is small but explicit:

• The snake body is stored in a fixed-size array of Point nodes
• Movement is handled by shifting body segments forward each frame
• Direction updates prevent immediate reversal into the snake body
• Food generation retries until it lands outside occupied cells
• Game state is modeled with an enum-based state machine: menu, playing, paused, game over, about, and mode selection

Tech Stack

• C99
• PDCurses
• CMake

Build

Windows

This repository vendors PDCurses, so the simplest path is to use CMake:

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build --config Release

Unix-like Systems

Install a curses implementation first, then build with CMake:

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

Run

./build/GreedySnake

On Windows with a multi-config generator, the executable may be under build/Release/GreedySnake.exe.

Controls

• Arrow keys: move
• P: pause / resume
• ESC or Q: return to menu
• Enter: confirm menu selection

Project Structure

• src/main.c: entry point and main loop
• src/game.c: game state updates, scoring, speed, wall handling
• src/snake.c: snake movement and self-collision logic
• src/food.c: food placement
• src/input.c: keyboard handling and menu interaction
• src/ui.c: terminal rendering

Why This Repo Is Public

This is not just a classroom archive. It is a compact C project that shows:

• basic data structure implementation
• terminal UI programming
• state machine design
• clean separation between input, game logic, and rendering

License

MIT