🐍 Snake Game — C++ & Raylib

A classic Snake game built from scratch in C++ using the Raylib graphics library. The snake's body is managed using a custom linked list — no arrays, no vectors, just raw pointers and nodes.

One thing I liked about this project: instead of dying at the walls, the snake wraps around to the other side. Feels much better to play.

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🚀 Features

• 🐍 Snake body built using a custom linked list (Node struct with raw pointers)
• 🍎 Food rendered as a custom PNG texture via Raylib
• 🔄 Wall wrapping — snake teleports through boundaries instead of dying
• 💥 Self-collision detection — hitting your own body ends the game
• 🏆 Score tracking — increases each time food is eaten
• 💀 Game over screen on self-collision
• ⚡ Smooth 60 FPS with timer-based movement speed

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🧠 Design & Data Structure

Concept	How I Applied It
Linked List	Snake body is a chain of Node structs — new head added on move, tail removed
Classes	Snake handles movement and rendering, Food handles spawning and texture
Encapsulation	Direction state and body logic are fully contained inside Snake
Dynamic Memory	Nodes are heap-allocated with new and freed with delete on tail removal
Collision Detection	Self-collision checked by traversing the full linked list each frame

How the Snake Moves

Every tick:
  AddHead()      → new Node created at front with updated position
  removeTail()   → last Node deleted from the back
  ate food?      → tail NOT removed → snake grows by 1

Class Structure

Snake
├── Node* head        → front of the linked list
├── Node* tail        → back of the linked list
├── AddHead()         → moves snake forward
├── removeTail()      → shrinks body when no food eaten
└── Draw()            → renders each node as a rounded rectangle

Food
├── Texture2D         → PNG image loaded via Raylib
├── GenerateRandomPos() → avoids spawning on snake body
└── Draw()            → renders food texture at grid position

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📁 Project Structure

snake-game-cpp/
│
├── snake.cpp         # Full game — Snake and Food classes
├── food.png          # Food sprite
├── assets/
│   ├── gameplay.png  # Gameplay screenshot
│   └── gameover.png  # Game over screen
└── README.md

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🎮 Controls

Key	Action
W or ↑	Move up
S or ↓	Move down
A or ←	Move left
D or →	Move right

📸 Screenshots

Gameplay

Game Over

⚙️ How to Run

Requirements

• G++ with C++17 support
• Raylib 5.5 installed
• Windows OS
• food.png in the same directory as the executable

Compile & Run

g++ -std=c++17 snake.cpp -o snake -I. -lraylib -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -lwinmm
./snake

Using VS Code

1. Open the project folder in VS Code
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + B to build
3. Press F5 to run

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👨‍💻 Developer

Kartar Singh CS Student @ IBA Karachi github.com/kartar-singh-cs

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📌 Why I Built This

Snake seemed simple until I started building it. Managing the body as a linked list — adding a head, removing a tail, checking for self-collision by traversing every node — made me think carefully about pointer logic and dynamic memory in a way that textbook exercises never did. Small project, real lessons.