{"id":596,"date":"2025-10-28T07:44:58","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T05:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hh3dlab.fi\/blog\/?p=596"},"modified":"2025-10-28T07:44:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T05:44:58","slug":"snake-and-pong-games-on-an-esp32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hh3dlab.fi\/blog\/iot\/snake-and-pong-games-on-an-esp32\/","title":{"rendered":"Snake and Pong games on an ESP32"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/h1>\n

Hi, our team is formed with three members Roope Rajahalme, Rasmus Rautakallio and Phong Phan. Before this course our background in programming and electronics was quite basic. We had some experience with Java programming projects but had never worked with displays or games before. We all had deep love for games, so we were curious if it was possible to create a game console on this course.<\/p>\n

Ideas<\/h1>\n

At the start, we brainstormed several project ideas, IoT Plant device, humidity tester, and a retro-style game. We finally decided on Snake game on ESP32 with a TFT screen and joystick controller. We went with these components because course criteria, was to use ESP32 and teacher suggested to use joystick instead of buttons. We decided on retro games because this offered room for creative effects like flashing colours or modifying snake animation also this was challenging enough to keep the project interesting. Creating one small minigame would be too easy and boring, so we decided to add a couple more games to our application. On top of having the snake game, we also made pong game, which is a basic ping pong game where you bounce the ball against walls and it returns it, and lastly we made a memory game, where the game shows inputs in different directions and the player is supposed to replicate the inputs from memory.<\/p>\n

What did we need to learn<\/h1>\n

The initial scope was to build a working Snake game where the player moves a snake with a joystick and eats food while avoiding collisions. We learned many things from this course.<\/p>\n