Raspberry Pi RP2040 matrix lets you play classic Snake game

It wasn’t long ago when we shared a fun-looking Kickstarter for Vcc Labs’ Raspberry Pi RP2040-powered Nova board. The project had yet to be released, but now the campaign has surpassed its goal, and the team is busy showing off what it can do in anticipation of its release. Today, we’re sharing a fun development demonstrating its ability to emulate the classic game of Snake.

The game works like the original but with LEDs changing color to indicate the snake and food. You can control the snake’s movement using buttons to move it up, down, left, or right. The snake gets slightly longer once you reach the red food dot, with an extra green LED joining its tail. The game is over if you bump into your tail or the edges of the Nova display.

This game demo also follows a new update shared by the team. The Nova board now features an extra ground pin and an “LED OUT” pin, which allows you to connect addressable LEDs to the board and get more LED functionality than just the 7 x 10px matrix display.

The Nova board is powered by an RP2040 microprocessor, and all of the LEDs on the matrix are individually addressable. Snake requires five buttons to handle the input options and a button to reset the game. External pull-down resistors are needed to support the buttons.

The team has made the code open source so anyone with a Nova can check it out for themselves. It’s coded using Arduino IDE and the FastLED Library. You can find the source code and instructions for putting it together on the official project page shared on Instructables.

If you’re excited about this Raspberry Pi project and want to know more about the Nova board, you can check out the official Kickstarter. Please be aware that backing a Kickstarter project is not a guarantee that you will receive the product but is more of an investment—so be sure to exercise caution before supporting any campaign.