Serpentine 3D

A big-screen rhythm snake game. Everyone watches one screen (a TV, a projector, a laptop) and steers their own snake with their phone or the keyboard. Every level is its own little world with its own song, and the floor and gems pulse on the beat.

It grew out of Serpentine, a browser game that mixes Dancing Line with Snake, made with classmates at SVA.

Play it: https://serpentine-3d.onrender.com/

Getting started

1. Open the game on the big screen and pick Play solo, Host a party or Join a friend's game.
2. Hosting: choose Party or Team. Friends scan the QR code with their phone (or open /controller.html and type the 4-letter code). To play on the computer itself, use + Me, on this keyboard.
3. Joining from a laptop or tablet: pick Join a friend's game and type the code from the host's screen.
4. Pick your snake, then start.

Modes

• Solo: ten levels in order, with a 30-second warm-up for first-timers. Eat gems to reach each level's goal; you have 3 lives per run. Clearing a level unlocks the next one, and your best score is kept for each difficulty.
• Party (2 to 8 players): everyone in one arena on a timer (60 seconds for 2 players, longer for bigger groups). Pick what you play for:
  • Gems: crash into anything, including another snake, and you lose a life and respawn. Highest score wins.
  • Tag: one snake is It, with a pink marker overhead. Snakes pass through each other, and whoever It touches becomes It (no instant tag-backs). Every second you're not It scores.
  • Shrink: the walls close in, a square the shape of the room that gets smaller a step every few bars of the song. Get caught outside it and you lose a life; last snake standing wins. Pick any of the four party rooms. If every real player is out, Skip to results finishes the round instantly.
• Team (2 to 4 players): work through the solo levels together. Every gem anyone eats counts toward a shared goal, teammates pass through each other, and each player has their own lives. A player who runs out stays out until the next run, and their split view goes to the players still in.

Everyone gets a random snake name (like Velvet Viper) unless they type their own. A phone can switch between steering the big screen and playing on its own screen at any time, and keeps its snake when it does. Someone who joins mid-round watches it live and plays from the next one. The host can remove any player from the lobby, or from the pause screen mid-round (handy for a snake nobody is steering).

Computer snakes can fill any open seat in party and tag team. They play at the difficulty you pick (Easy, Normal or Hard), and can get their own split view if you want to watch them.

Controls

• Phone: player 1's phone picks the level, adds computer snakes and starts the game. Everyone picks their snake on their own phone. Tip the phone to steer (smooth and analog, so the snake curves), and jump to jump. Left, Jump and Right buttons are always there as a backup, and a Sensitivity panel tunes the tilt and jump.
• Keyboard: hold ← → to steer, Space or ↑ jumps, C changes view. Two people can share a keyboard: A D W and the arrows.
• Phone or tablet as the screen: tilt to steer and tap to jump.

Snakes

Snake	What it does
Classic	Balanced, no tricks
Glider	Jumps twice as far and clears pillars, but grows faster
Magnet	Pulls in nearby gems, then needs a moment to recharge; shorter jumps
Comet	About 25% faster, with a wider turning circle

Views

Eye (inside the snake's head), Chase (just above and behind) and Top (the original bird's-eye board, solo only). Press C to switch. A small map shows the arena; it hides when a screen is split more than two ways.

Levels

#	Level	Gem goal	World	Song
1	Open Floor	12	Dusk and a pink moon	Good Night (Lofi Cozy Chill Music), FASSounds
2	Four Pillars	16	Outrun sunset	Static Heart, AleXZavesa
3	Corridors	20	Toy world: grass, toy blocks, logs, toadstool gems	The Return Of The 8-bit Era, DJARTMUSIC
4	Gauntlet	24	Warehouse rave with lasers	Vampire Night (Dark Acid Techno), wbmstudio
5	Mirror Ball	26	Light-up disco floor, giant mirror balls	Midnight Parade, djovan
6	Beat Gates	26	Neon light-cycle city; gates rise and fall on the beat	Hard Cyberpunk, Kulakovka
7	Undertow	28	Coral reef, jellyfish	La nuit, Jean_Motell
8	Rooms	30	Construction site with scaffolding	Upbeat Electronic Beat, Tunetank
9	Event Horizon	30	Deep space: a black hole, a ring station, smoked-glass walls	Interstellar, QuentinGaming
10	Last Dance	34	Rainbow road in space, with ramps and coins	Built-in synth

Party rooms

Room	World	Song
Block Party	Bright platformer (level 3)	The Return Of The 8-bit Era
Crossroads	Warehouse rave	Vampire Night
Pinball	Rainy neon city split by a highway, two tunnels across	Hard Cyberpunk
Night Market	Deep space	Interstellar

All recorded songs are from Pixabay under the Pixabay Content License.

How it works

• Plain files, no build step. index.html is the whole game, controller.html turns a phone into a controller, and music/ holds the songs.
• Phones connect through PeerJS: its free server only handles the handshake, and game data goes directly between devices over WebRTC. Some networks block that direct path, so ice.js adds a free TURN relay from Metered for when a phone can't connect directly.
• 3D is drawn with three.js. A copy ships in vendor/ so a slow or blocked CDN can't stop the game from starting; if 3D can't run at all, solo falls back to the top view.
• Music loads per level and loops; the visuals pulse from the song's measured tempo. Losing a life or pausing picks the song back up where it stopped. If a song fails to load, the game retries rather than switching to the built-in synth.
• If the game ever fails to start, it says so on screen with the reason and a Reload button, instead of showing a black page.

Phones only share motion sensors over HTTPS, so test the phone controller on the deployed site, not a local http:// address.

Run it locally

Serve the folder and open it in a browser:

python3 -m http.server 8000

Songs don't load from a page opened straight from a file (file://); in that case the game uses its built-in synth music.

Deploy

render.yaml deploys the folder to Render as a static site with no build step.

Credits

Built on Serpentine, the original browser version made with classmates at SVA. Music from the Pixabay artists listed above.