Classic Snake game is now available for Teams

By João Ferreira Apr 26, 2020 Apps, Microsoft Teams 10 Comments

If you lived during the late 90’s you must remember the classic Snake game immortalized by Nokia phones, even though the concept is largely associated to the Finnish company it has been around since 1976 in several formats and shapes.

Snake for Microsoft Teams is a perfect fit for your casual team or channel. Most organizations especially during the Covid-19 lockdown have created teams where people can share non work-related content and have some fun, Snake will be the arcade machine in the room that everyone will want to play.

Snake for Microsoft Teams

Snake for Microsoft Teams features

Snake for Microsoft Teams is based in a tutorial from the HTML5 Canvas Tutorials, I’ve used it as starting point and have modified it to add extra features that allow you to add an extra layer of control as a team owner.

Number of credits – this is a setting in the application that the channel owner can configure, with it you can limit the number of plays each member can have per day. The default value is empty meaning unlimited game plays.
Leader board – displays the top 5 highest scores in the game
Theme support – The game will adjust automatically to your Microsoft Teams theme
Speed – You can define 3 different speeds to play the game
Wall – Allow to play the game in a closed or open environment

Snake for Microsoft Teams

How to install Snake for Microsoft Teams

Snake is provided as a SharePoint web part and must be installed in the global SharePoint app catalog by doing the following:

Download the SPPKG installation file from here and extract it
Open the SharePoint app catalog and upload the solution
While deploying it make sure you select the option Make this solution available to all sites in the organization
Once deployed select the solution and from the ribbon bar click on Sync to Teams
Open the team where you want to add the Snake game
Click the + sign and Search for Snake
Click on it and then click on Add
On the modal with the huge Teams logo click on Save
When you first add the app define the number of plays each user can have per day

You are all stet to start playing and have some fun but remember Microsoft Teams is the place to get your work done use the game with moderation.

Download Snake

The app logo and the hero image of this post were provided by Freepik

10 Responses to “Classic Snake game is now available for Teams”

Tanya
April 27, 2020

Prompted for username and password to download file when downloading direct from your site.. Downloaded file from your email link and when uploaded solution got this error message

The package contains the wrong number of relationships for relationship type ‘http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/2012/app/relationships/package-manifest’. Expected: ‘1’. Actual: ‘0’.
- João Ferreira
  April 27, 2020
  
  Hi Tanya,
  
  Thanks for letting me know I fixed the link and updated the instructions.
  You need to upload the file inside the zip instead of the zip, let me know how it went.
  
  Have a nice day 🙂
  - Tanya
    April 27, 2020
    
    Doh! Thank you.
Troy Taylor
May 29, 2020

I’m getting the following error when I go to add it as a tab in Teams:
App not found
The app may not exist, or your organization may have disallowed you from using it
- João Ferreira
  June 19, 2020
  
  Hi Troy,
  
  This could be happening because the app is being blocked by a Microsoft Teams Policy.
  If you have admin permissions check if it’s blocked or not.
  
  Have a nice day 🙂
Gav
June 16, 2020

Hi again,

Any ideas how/if we can do this to specific site collections/teams rather than org-wide?

Thanks
Gav

P.S. great idea!
- João Ferreira
  June 19, 2020
  
  Hi Gav,
  
  Thanks for your feedback, once you install the app it will become available globally to all the site collections.
  This is the only way to install an app form SharePoint and then deploy it to Teams.
  
  What you can do once the app is installed on Microsoft Teams is to create a custom policy for the apps and restrict the usage to specific users.
  
  Have a nice day 🙂
James H
November 24, 2020

This is brilliant, is there an app I can use directly in SharePoint and not teams?
- James H
  November 24, 2020
  
  Ignore me, it works on modern SharePoint sites too, just added the web part.
  
  I wish more games and things were available like this, invaluable for company spirit in the current times.
  
  Thanks for all!
  - João Ferreira
    January 21, 2021
    
    Happy you are enjoying the game 🙂