Zoho L3 Coding Round June 15 2024 || Design Snake Game
SAKTHIVEL M
1466
Jun 21, 2024
Jun 21, 2024
Zohointerview experienceinterview questionInterview

Hi everyone,

I recently had my third round interview with Zoho, and I wanted to share my experience and the question I encountered. I believe this could be helpful for those preparing for similar interviews.

Design a Snake Game

Description:
You are tasked with designing a Snake game for a device with a screen size specified by the user (height x width).

Here are the specifics:

  • The snake starts at the top left corner (0, 0) with a length of 1 unit.
  • You are given an array called food where food[i] = (ri, ci) represents the row and column position of a piece of food. The snake eats the food to grow and increase the score by 1.
  • Food pieces appear sequentially on the screen, meaning the next piece of food will only appear after the current piece has been eaten.
  • It is guaranteed that food will not appear on a block currently occupied by the snake.
  • The game ends if the snake goes out of bounds (hits a wall) or if the snake's head collides with any part of its body.
  • You need to implement the Snake Game based on these rules.

Additional Details:
Time to complete: 3 hours
Difficulty: Moderate to Hard

Tips for Implementation:

  • Track the Snake's Position: Maintain a data structure to keep track of the snake's body segments and their positions.
  • Food Management: Ensure new food appears only after the current food is eaten and does not overlap with the snake's body.
  • Boundary and Collision Checks: Implement checks to detect when the snake hits the walls or itself.
  • Game Over Conditions: Define clear conditions for when the game should end.

My Approach:

  • Used a queue to represent the snake's body and updated it as the snake moved.
  • Used a set to quickly check for collisions with the snake's body.
  • Managed food appearance and game state updates in a systematic manner.
  • This was a challenging but fun problem that tested my understanding of data structures and algorithms.

Advice for Future Candidates:
Practice implementing various game simulations.
Focus on edge cases like boundary conditions and self-collision detection.
Optimize for efficiency, especially in updating the snake’s position and checking collisions.
Good luck to everyone preparing for your interviews!

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