In the past decade a variety of games have emerged where players need to create an AI to play the game rather than play the game directly. In this episode we speak with the creator of one of those games - Battlesnake. Brad Van Vugt joins us to talk about building a game engine using Go, making programming games easier for beginners to get started with, the long term vision for games like Battlesnake, and more.

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Featuring:

Brad Van Vugt – Website, GitHub, X
Jon Calhoun – Website, GitHub, X
Mat Ryer – GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, X

Show Notes:

Battlesnake - Sign up and try out Battlesnake
Battlesnake in Action - A few quick 1v1 games between one of Brad and Jon’s Battlesnakes
2019 Battlesnake Finals - The crazy unexpected win of the 2019 championship
Board Generator - A Battlesnake board generator created by a community member.
Battlesnake Rules Engine - The game rules engine that is written in Go.

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

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