CS491 – Homework 0 – Snakes On A Phone
App Name: Snakes On A Phone
Developer: Google (Open Android Project)
Platform: Android
Screens:
Everyone’s favorite classic cell phone game is back in this exciting remake of snake. I do not have an Android mobile device so I uploaded this game from the samples provided in the Android SDK. When first loaded, the app provides the user with a friendly “press up to play” message, and that’s about all the guidance that is given. Once the game starts I the standard up, down, left, and right arrows on the keypad are used until you hit the wall or your tail….pretty standard.
The game doesn’t appear to make any use of widgets or controls. It looks like it is comprised of 1 layout, and all the text is on-screen drawn strings. The app does not utilize any touch screen functions at all, just using the keypad arrows. I did not really find any major stress test malfunctions, but when I quickly pressed a sequence of buttons, the snake would only react to the first direction ignoring the rest.
3 things that I would first improve on is 1) Show the current score on screen, 2) Start the snake off at a faster speed because it takes forever to get going, and 3) keep track of player high scores. When I searched for other Snake apps on the Android market, a few of the top apps that came up definitely looked like they used this open source app as a base. Some of the comments for apps that look like they were based off of this one included “This game is good for a quick game during a lunch break or waiting” and “Great game, cant beat such a classic game, although its better on non touch screen”. It sounds like just using the keyboard and not the touch screen is the way to go for this game. Money wise, this app would need a lot of features and graphics upgrade to make any kind of money, but I think it’s main intentions are to be used as a base to build off of.