Playing¶
You can play Hatchling yourself in a terminal. No setup is needed if you use a prebuilt binary.
Download¶
Every release comes with ready-to-run binaries for Linux and Windows. Download the one for your system and start it from a terminal.
chmod +x snake-linux-x86_64
./snake-linux-x86_64
The Linux binary links the C++ runtime statically, so it runs on most distributions without extra packages.
.\snake-windows-x86_64.exe
Run it from Command Prompt or PowerShell. Modern Windows terminals display the board correctly out of the box.
If you prefer to compile it yourself, see Building.
Controls¶
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
W or Up |
Move up |
S or Down |
Move down |
A or Left |
Move left |
D or Right |
Move right |
Q or Esc |
Quit |
The snake cannot turn back into itself. If you press the direction you came from, it simply keeps going straight.
The board¶
The board is 20 cells wide and 15 cells tall. The snake starts with 3 cells in the middle of the board, moving right.
+----------------------------------------+
| |
| * |
| o o o @ |
| |
+----------------------------------------+
Score: 0
The head is @, the body is o and the food is *. Every food you eat adds one point to the score and one cell to the snake. The game ends when you hit a wall or your own body, and you win if the snake fills the whole board, which means a score of 297.
The game advances every 100 milliseconds. You can change the speed and the board size in src/app/main.cpp before building it yourself.