Developer shares how to build a browser Snake game in under 350 lines of vanilla JS

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A developer publishing on DEV Community has detailed how to build a single-player Snake game that runs in the browser using vanilla JavaScript and the HTML canvas element. The guide covers core mechanics including a fixed-tick grid system, arrow and WASD controls with a one-slot direction buffer to prevent instant reversals, and food that respawns on genuinely empty cells rather than through a retry loop. The snake grows by one segment upon eating food, while hitting a wall or its own body triggers a Game Over state. Score increases with each food item consumed, and the tick interval can optionally decrease over time to raise difficulty. The full implementation is described as achievable in roughly 350 lines of code, with optional enhancements like wrap-around walls and power-ups suggested as follow-up additions.

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