Elemental Snake

Elemental Snake is a fast-paced arcade survival game where you control a shape-shifting snake that can switch between four elements: fire, earth, ice, and wind. Your goal is to survive as long as possible, clear as many waves as you can, and master the elemental system to outplay your enemies.

Each element lets the snake interact differently with the world. You can only consume enemies that share your current element, while fruits randomly spawning on the map charge up a separate ultimate ability for each element. Enemies also spawn randomly with their own elemental type, and each element has both strengths and weaknesses, influencing how much damage your ultimate deals depending on the enemy type.

The wave system is driven by a quadratic–exponential progression so that difficulty ramps up over time in a controlled but challenging way. Enemy spawns become increasingly intense as waves advance, making positioning, timing, and element switching more and more important. This provides a clear difficulty curve that rewards players who understand and exploit the system.

From a technical perspective, the snake uses Unity’s new Input System and supports keyboard (ZQSD and arrow keys) as well as controller input. The snake grows every time it eats a fruit or an enemy of the same element, staying faithful to classic Snake while expanding the mechanics with modern game design. Input is also mapped so that Enter / left click trigger the ultimate when conditions are met, and dedicated keys let the player switch element at any time.

Core gameplay logic is built around Scriptable Objects to define elements, attack types, and snake configurations, making the system easy to extend and maintain. Enemies share a common interface for behavior, but each element has its own distinct movement pattern: fire moves in zigzag, ice moves in circles, wind moves diagonally, and earth moves straight. An EnemyManager handles enemy spawning, while health bars are implemented using Unity UI sliders directly above each enemy.

On the architecture side, a singleton pattern is used to manage scene transitions and some global systems, ensuring that state and managers remain consistent between gameplay and menus. The elemental strengths/weaknesses system is fully integrated into the ultimate logic, so for example a fire ultimate will deal no damage to fire enemies, encouraging players to switch forms strategically instead of spamming abilities. This project showcases work on input handling, system design, scalable wave progression, and clean, data-driven gameplay architecture.

Big thanks to Emma Boulain who made the different snakes sprites!