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How I Built a Retro Snake Game with AI in Under 5min

Have you ever wanted to create a game but didn’t know how to code? Thanks to Amazon Q Developer CLI, you can now build a game like Snake in just a few minutes using only natural language.

As part of the Build Games Challenge by AWS, I made a Snake-style game where you collect AWS icons instead of apples. No manual coding. Just prompts.


Watch the Process:

👉 How to Build the Game with Amazon Q Developer – Full Video


👉 Installing Amazon Q on Windows – Setup Guide


What I Used:

  • Amazon Q Developer CLI (free with AWS Builder ID)
  • PyGame (for rendering Snake-style movement)

Access the Code on GitHub

I’ve published the full source code of my AWS Snake game on GitHub. Feel free to explore, and customize it!

👉 https://github.com/lepczynski-cloud/aws_snake_game


Why I Chose Snake

Snake is simple to understand, quick to implement, and easy to adapt. It was the perfect fit for testing how far I could go using only conversational prompts in Amazon Q.

I also liked the idea of mixing nostalgia with cloud-native fun chasing down AWS icons is oddly satisfying.


What I Learned

  • Prompting matters. Describing behavior clearly to Q gives you better code.
  • Q handles repetitive logic brilliantly, like movement loops and collision detection.
  • It’s easy to iterate: “Add a score counter”, “change the icon to S3”, or “make the snake go faster after 10 points” — Q just gets it done.

Summary

If you’ve ever wanted to build a game but felt overwhelmed by code this challenge is made for you. With Q Developer CLI, you don’t need to be an expert. You just need an idea… and a little creativity.

Share what you've built in the comments 🚀

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