Snakes: The Game

Re-imagining a classic mobile game for a product launch.

The Natural Confectionery Company released a new low sugar formula for their classic snakes lollies and decided that gamification was the best tool to capture the attention of Australian consumers.

We developed a web game based on the classic NOKIA mobile game, Snake, and installed it in arcade cabinets with physical controllers which were taken to activation sites all around Australia.

An image of the booth set-up for Snakes the Game

We were presented with

The Challenge

Create an engaging experience that is reminiscent of the classic Nokia game, build physical hardware to give the game an arcade feel, and capture user data for follow up marketing.

That became

The Solution

Incentivise Data Capture

Players were incentivized to enter their phone and email address by offering various prizes for getting a high score.

The data was captured in a Firebase database and used for follow up marketing.

A Screenshot from Snakes the Game, a game developed by Sydney based Game development Studio Chaos Theory Games

A Screenshot from Snakes the Game of a high scoring player

A Targeted Session Length

The increase in difficulty after eating each fruit is based on a modified exponential algorithm, leading to a spike in difficulty after approximately 30 seconds of play.

This ensured that the vast majority of players would have a session time between 30 seconds and 1 minute, maximising the number of people that could use the experience during the activation.

Technology

The client wanted the game to be playable both at the activation and on mobile devices so that customers could continue the competition at home. We decided to use a combination of technologies to get the desired game feel in the limited timeline.

React was used to create a responsive UI that felt great to use, PlayCanvas was used for gameplay as it allowed for a dynamic and intuitive control scheme, and Firebase was used for data capture and analytics visualization.