Developer creates a subpixel version of Snake that requires a microscope to play

In brief: Is Snake becoming the new Doom? A few weeks after the classic mobile title was shrunk down to a 56-byte QR code, someone has developed what’s likely to be the world’s smallest version of the game. It’s so tiny that it requires a microscope to play correctly.

The microscopic version of Snake is the work of software developer Patrick Gillespie, who demonstrated the amazing feat on his YouTube channel.

Gillespie explains in the video that he created a JavaScript Snake game 15 years ago. His goal was to shrink it down to the point where the game uses the individual subpixels of a monitor.

Subpixels are the smaller components that make up a single pixel on a digital display. They typically come in red, green, and blue lights, and their brightness is adjusted to create the different colors that we see while looking at a display.

Gillespie used his iMac for the browser-based project as its pixel geometry is an RGB stripe formation. The project didn’t get off to a smooth start as he struggled to make the game show just one color in each subpixel. The green subpixel was showing some red and blue, requiring him to switch to an LED color space with a wider gamut.

For those who don’t own a microscope but still want to try this subpixel version of Snake, it can be played in a web browser at maximum zoom, though you also need to use the Windows Magnifier function turned up to maximum. This won’t be as effective as using a microscope, of course.

You can check out Gillespie’s Snake game on his personal website. You can also take a look at the code over on GitHub to discover more about how it was put together.

This is the second unconventional version of Snake we’ve seen this month. A couple of weeks ago, developer donno2048 managed to squeeze the game down to just 56 bytes, making it small enough to be encoded into a single QR code. You can check out the demo of that project right here.