Winter Challenge 2026 - Exotec Snakebots

🎯 Goal

Collect energy to grow your robot snakes and have the longest ones at game end.

📂 Official Contest Website

📂 Game Rules

🧠 Solution Approach

• Iterative improvement using insights from Vertex AI, Claude, and ChatGPT.
• Identified key weaknesses through arena losses, implemented targeted fixes via 3 PRs directly on GitHub web interface.

🛠️ Tech Stack

Python 3.11

• No external dependencies
• Grid simulation + BFS pathfinding

🚀 How to Run & Test

Arena deployment:

• Copy code to official arena → battle other players → analyze losses
• Paste losing code into GitHub web editor → reproduce scenarios → fix weaknesses

Testing:

• Arena validation: Replayed 10 lost matches, confirmed win rate improvement
• Integration: Multi-snake coordination

Validation:

• Arena: Replayed 10 lost matches → confirmed through win rate improvement
• Integration: Multi-snake coordination validated via scenario replay

⚖️ Design Trade-offs

• Correctness > Speed: Full validation before moves (safer)
• Simple opponent model: Predicts 1-2 moves ahead (fast, good enough for most races)
• Risky moves allowed: Scores high-reward positions despite temporary gravity risk
• Team coordination: Greedy team scoring (scales better than full combinatorial search)
• No runtime ML: Development used AI tools, but gameplay runs pure algorithms (fits per-turn time limits)
• Web-only workflow: All development via GitHub web editor (no local setup required)

🏆 Competition Results

🥉 Bronze League: Code Winner

Silver League: Code #183 of a total of 1,119 🥈

Contact

LinkedIn : Francesca Oliveira

Email : fran.odc@pm.me

Dernière mise à jour : Mars 2026