A new way to play Battlesnake called Battlegrounds is officially open! Battlegrounds will replace Global Arenas, which will shut down on May 31st.

Battlegrounds is a recurring month-long competition where developers can enter their Battlesnakes in ladders to earn achievements and accolades. Each month, we will open up a new set of competitive ladders, each with a unique environment that will put your coding skills to the test!

Some ladders will offer consistent game modes month-to-month, allowing players to track improvement and progress.  Other ladders will act as testing grounds for new experimental combinations of game mechanics in a competitive environment.

At the end of each month, the ladders will be scored and achievements awarded based on your placement on the leaderboards (such as 1st, Top 10 or Top 50).

Battlegrounds ladders will operate similarly to seasonal league ladders, which begin at a set time once per day and run up to 100 matches. This gives players the ability to view ladder progression for all of their Battlesnakes after each round of matches.

New Ladder Progress Card

Getting Started​

Battlegrounds are easy to join! If you have a Battlesnake ready, you can enter it into any of the active ladders on the Battlegrounds page. You can participate in any of the ladders you'd like, and you're able to choose different Battlesnakes for each ladder.

Training Program Challenges

June Battlegrounds​

Our inaugural Battlegrounds competition will run from May 15 to June 30th and will consist of 4 different ladders.

Standard​

The classic version of competitive Battlesnake: 11 x 11 game board and 4 Battlesnakes.  Standard ladder matches run daily at 12 pm GMT.

Duels​

The most purely competitive game mode, where two Battlesnakes compete head-to-head on an 11x11 board. Duels ladder matches run daily at 6 pm GMT.

Wrapped​

The star game mechanic of the 2022 Competitive Season, the Wrapped ladder will provide a place to compete in-between our scheduled league play.  Wrapped ladder matches run daily at 6 am GMT.

Constrictor​

The constrictor game mechanic has a special place in our hearts and has not yet shown a Battlesnake with a dominant strategy. Will yours be the first? Constrictor ladder matches run daily at 12 am GMT.

Replacing Global Arenas​

The launch of the new Battlegrounds means we are going to sunset the existing Global Arenas on May 31st. Match generation on these ladders will stop and the final results archived. You will still be able to go to these ladder pages going forward but they will not be linked prominently on the play.battlesnake.com site.

The Battlegrounds feature is in beta so expect improvements and changes to occur as we refine the feature. We will be actively listening to feedback on the Battlesnake Discord server and the Battlesnake Discussions forum as we explore what is and isn't working! You're also welcome to email us at hello@battlesnake.com

See you at the Battlegrounds!

Don't just be ready for battle, look ready for battle too with our new competitive season merch line. Now available in our store today!

Limited Edition 2022 Competitive League T-Shirt​

With its sporty new design and right arm band decal, the star of this show is the 2o22 Competitive League T-Shirt. Quantities are limited, so grab one before they're gone!

Introducing 3 New Packs​

You asked for it! Brought to you by popular demand, all four seasonal mountains can now be yours thanks to the new Mountainous 4-Pack!

Also making their sticker debut, are 6 new Battle Block Stickers (that you've definitely never seen before outside of a Battlesnake game).

If you're having trouble deciding, we've got you covered. You can collect them all and more by picking up the Super Sticker Battle Bundle (25-Pack).

A Little Something for the Whole Family​

You'll get not one, but TWO 27" bandanas in this "duel" pack. One for you and your friend! Suitable for humans and pets.

Snakey Shoelaces Available for Preorder​

The 48" Snakey Shoelaces are available for preorder! We expect them to ship out at the beginning of June. They'll fit nicely into your old pair of chucks.

Got a merch idea? We're all ears!​

Do you ever lie awake at night thinking about all the cool stuff that could be made cooler if only it had Battlesnakes on it? You are not alone.

Tell us about the merch of your dreams by tweeting us@playbattlesnake, reaching out on Discord, or at hello@battlesnake.com.

We can't promise we'll be able to bring your creation to life, but we'd certainly love to hear about it.

That's all for now! We hope you liked what you saw. See you in Summer League!

Applications are now open to join the Summer 2022 cohort of the RBC & Battlesnake Developer Fellowship, a collaborative initiative that supports women and non-binary developers from across Canada in taking the next step in their journey as a professional developer through Battlesnake.

Eligibility Criteria:​

• **Woman or non-binary developer **(includes but not limited to: non-binary, gender non-conforming, transgender, genderfluid, intersex, genderqueer, and agender).
• Currently living, working or studying **in Canada.**

An existing Battlesnake account is ****not required** to apply.*

Fellowship recipients gain access to resources including:​

• One-on-one mentorship and career development support from experienced industry professionals at Tech @ RBC.
• A community of like-minded women and non-binary developers working to improve their skills.
• Bi-weekly networking and learning meetups to explore new technologies and build competitive Battlesnakes.
• A ton of Battlesnake and RBC swag!

Learn more about the Developer Fellowship, its benefits, and how you can become a member of the Summer 2022 cohort.

Happy end of April everyone! For your reading pleasure, please allow me to present to you a review of what the Battlesnake team has cooked up this month.

No More 1st Turn Corner Food​

One should always have a healthy suspicion of a random number generator, and while we do appreciate the unpredictability and opportunities for delight and tragedy that can happen when a food spawns in just the right (or wrong!) place during an intense game, that doesn't mean we should let the old RNG make absolutely every decision.

On the first turn of a Battlesnake game, where food is positioned such that there is one near the head of each Battlesnake and one located in the center of the board, the corners of the board are no longer valid locations for those initial foods to spawn. This is to remove a slight starting state disadvantage for any Battlesnake whose "first food" was positioned this way.

A now invalid first turn board configuration, as starting food may not be placed in the corners

New Progression Data on Leaderboards​

As a part of Spring League 2022, and in a few Beta Global Arenas, we introduced the concept of 'Matchmaking Windows', which uses a scheduler to run a fixed number of games on a Ladder during a pre-determined time window. Now that a regular schedule is in place, this has given us an opportunity to compare changes for individual Battlesnakes participating in a Ladder between these windows, and display some juicy new stats to help in your monitoring and when checking the impact of code changes. There are now details about the "Latest Round" that highlight the rank, point changes, win rate, and more for the last run window of games.

If you click on any Battlesnake listed in a Ladder, you can see the new information that has been added. Please let us know what you think and if you find this information to be helpful!

New data for Battlesnake progression on any Ladder

API Updates​

In response to a comment from community member mawif in the Discord server, new values have been added to the Game.source field on the Battlesnake API. We're now providing more descriptive values, such that when a game originates from a League Ladder, vs a Global Arena Ladder, you can now tell the difference and prioritize or handle your game as you see fit (perhaps you want to make sure those League games get all your CPU cycles!). You can see the full list of possible values for Game.source in the documentation for the Game object.

We also fixed a small bug in the API code. When a Battlesnake responds to the /move API endpoint, the documentation clearly states that it must return an HTTP 200 Response Code, however, the truth was that it did accept other values. Our mistake! We don't think anyone noticed, or that any active Battlesnakes were returning non-200 values, but that isn't an excuse for an untidy API! A fix is in place, and the code and documentation now correctly agree.

Community Contributions​

The Battlesnake community continues to be delightfully active and engaged, and I'm starting to think I will always need to reserve space to report on the 'Community Contributions' made each month!

For April, a warm thank you to jlafayette who authored a pull request to improve the project documentation for the Rules CLI, as well as to fwc who caught and fixed a typo in the Battlesnake API Docs. Also a shout out to Jonathan in Discord who caught some incorrect data labeling on the 'Winter Classic 2020 Participant' Achievement and gave us a chance to fix it.

Thanks everyone for your contributions and assistance! You are the champions of our hearts.

A Battlesnake trophy, for you, the community

Announcing Community Council​

Speaking of community contributions, we've launched the new 'Community Council', inviting members who expressed interest on last year's Annual Survey in providing additional feedback to Battlesnake this year.

The Community Council will get a sneak peek at upcoming and in-progress features so that they can provide early input and feedback, and help us make Battlesnake more accessible and fun for everyone.

We were absolutely blown away by the number of people who were willing to give us some of their time and help us out in this manner, so thank you to everyone involved!

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

In November 2021, Rob was able to announce an incredible new Battlesnake feature he had been working very hard on: Engine Regions.

Today, we are pleased to share that he has emerged again from behind his monitors to let us know that we have expanded global coverage with new Engine Regions hosted on DigitalOcean.

How Engine Regions Work​

Battlesnake Engine Regions allow players to host their Battlesnake wherever suits them best, without being penalized by additional latency between their Battlesnake and the Game Engine.

The Engine Region feature allows you to select an Engine Region server closer to where your Battlesnake is hosted, and then measures the response time between your Battlesnake and the Engine Region server you choose. All Engine Regions are compatible, and Battlesnake games continue to be played globally.

For a full list of all supported Engine Regions, and instructions on how to set your Battlesnake's region, check out our documentation.

New Engine Region Locations​

We have added three new servers located in Singapore, Frankfurt Germany, and Toronto Canada.

All three of these new regions are hosted on DigitalOcean. If you host your Battlesnake on DigitalOcean already, you can switch your Battlesnake to use a matching region and should be able to squeeze every last millisecond out for processing your /move requests.

These locations should better support our Battlesnake friends in Central Europe, Eastern Canada/USA, and the fine folks in Southeast Asia, New Zealand, and Australia, who have suffered for some time with rather high latencies.

Go to your profile at http://play.battlesnake.com/me, choose a Battlesnake and click "Edit", and you'll see the dropdown to change your "Engine Region".

GCP Beta Test Concluded​

We are also officially taking the previously released Google Cloud Platform Regions and ending their Beta period - they are here to stay! Thanks to everyone who tested them out and provided feedback on them, we really appreciate it. These Engine Regions will continue to be available for any Battlesnake player to use.

GCP Regions have been promoted out of Beta

Feedback!​

If you are using the new Engine Regions and notice any issues, or just want to brag about how much faster your Battlesnake is, please let us know in the Feedback Repo, or on Discord. If you send us a game ID, we can take a look in our logs.

With just over a week since the end of an exciting Battlesnake competition, we're thrilled to share the final standings from the 2022 Spring League Platinum and Elite tournaments.

Platinum Championship​

Congratulations to all Platinum tournament competitors!​

While all 32 of the Battlesnakes who qualified in the Platinum tier brought their A-game to the tournament on March 19th, in the end only one could claim the first Platinum championship title of the 2022 competitive season!

Check out Avoiding Deaths's exciting final match from the 2022 Spring League Platinum tournament finals.

Learn more about Avoiding Deathand its developer brandosha.

And don't forget, you can re-live all the exciting Spring League Platinum tournament action anytime you like at twitch.tv/battlesnakeofficial!

Elite Championship​

Congratulations to all Elite tournament competitors!​

Looking at the 16 Battlesnakes who qualified for the Elite tournament on March 26th, we knew that we were in for a pretty good show, and it is safe to say these competitors did not disappoint!

Check out Shapeshifter's exciting final match from the Spring League Elite tournament.

Learn more about Shapeshifterand its developer JonathanArns:

And don't forget, you can re-live all the exciting Spring League Elite tournament action anytime you like at twitch.tv/battlesnakeofficial!

People's Choice Award​

Three cheers for all of the 2022 Spring League competitors!​

While Avoiding Death and Shapeshifter brought some next level competition to the 2022 Spring League, they weren't the only winners this March.

Learn more about Hovering Hobbsand its developer coreyja.

Competitor Experience Survey​

Help us make Summer League even better!​

At Battlesnake, we're committed to supporting our community and continually improving Battlesnake for everyone!

Thanks for Competing!​

Before we close, we want to thank you for reading, and of course to thank all of the amazing developers who competed in the 2022 Spring League!

We also want to send a final shout out to our spectacular community, and to our wonderful 2022 partners at RBC, New Relic, DigitalOcean and Twilio who make these competitions possible ❤️‌

And just like that, March is over! Spring League 2022 has come to an end and the Battlesnake Dev team is now planning out what we can release before the next League kicks off in June. But first, let's review what happened in March!

New Double-Win Tournament Play​

Those of you who watched the Spring League 2022 final Tournaments may have noticed that there was a new win-state for tournament play. Historically, in the early rounds of a tournament we would play two games - the first winner would advance to the next round, and then a 2nd game would be played (minus the winning Battlesnake) and identify a 2nd winner to also advance to the next round.

The classic tournament format

For the Platinum and Elite tournament this Spring we had a change. In the early rounds, the first two Battlesnakes to each achieve two victories were advanced to the next round (and as soon as a single Battlesnake won two games, it was removed from the group). The net result was more games, more chances to win, and more fun.

Building this out has required some code changes and adjustments on the backend, and we're pretty happy to see the code shaping up in a way that we can explore and expose other tournament formats in future.

You can watch the new format in action on Twitch.

Updating the Battlesnake API Map Properties​

This spring saw the release of several new hazard maps and uses of hazards beyond what Royale mode gives us.

To make sure this information is correctly and consistently communicated, the API has been updated and changes finalized so that developers can see both the hazardMap and hazardMapAuthor. Check out the RulesetSetting object in the Battlesnake API documentation for details!

Favorite Even More Battlesnake Games!​

Community member BoldBigFlank discovered the secret maximum number of Battlesnake games a single person can favorite... and found that number to be lacking. So we've cranked up the value to 250 games, but leave the consequences of managing that many favorite games in your hands.

When watching a Battlesnake game, click the 'Add to Favorites' button to save it in your profile Admittedly, the 'Favorites' feature is pretty primitive at the moment. This is absolutely something we'd like to revisit in the future, but for now if you want to save any Battlesnake games for later reference, this will get the job done!

Community Contribution - Reporting Draws​

We love it when folks take advantage of the open source portions of the Battlesnake codebase, and want to thank community member demin-dmitriy for noticing and creating a pull request  to address some invalidly reported data in the Rules repository when a Battlesnake game ended in a draw.

All together we are a much more mighty team, so we appreciate all the folks who contribute in this way!

Continuing Projects​

When we write code, we make sure we have a hardhat and hammer at the ready, just in case.

March has had the Battlesnake Devs heads down as we have been focusing on several longer running active projects that are not quite ready to release. We continue to tackle a major overhaul in how the user interface is built, designed, and rendered, we're expanding our Engine Regions to provide better global coverage, and we are hoping to launch a new 'Teams' beta before Summer League starts.

Keep your eyes peeled for future blogposts that will outline all the details of these features when they launch!

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

With the leaderboard officially closed, let’s take a look at the Top Tier Bhumbas that qualified for the 2022 Spring League Tournament—Don’t miss it this Saturday, March 19th at 9am PT / 12pm ET/  5pm CET.

Platinum Tier​

An incredible 32 Battlesnake's qualified in the Platinum tier of the 2022 Spring League Tournament which will take place on March 19th.

Learn more about the Platinum Tier Tournament Brackets

Elite Tier​

With some fierce competition throughout the competition, 16 of this seasons best Battlesnakes qualified for the 2022 Spring League Elite Tournament.

Learn More about the Elite Tier Tournament Brackets

Tournament Format​

Spring League Platinum Tournament (March 19th)​

Part one of the 2022 Spring League tournament will take place on Saturday, March 19th at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5PM CET on the Battlesnake Twitch Channel with the 32 Platinum Qualified Battlesnakes.

In this phase, to advance in the first round, a Battlesnake must get 2 wins instead of 1. Once they earn 2 wins and advance, additional games are played (without them) until a second snake accrues 2 wins and also advances.

Each group in the initial stage will play 4-6 games to determine the two winners that move onto the next stage of the tournament.

In the next two stages of competition (i.e the Quarterfinals and Semifinals), 2 wins are again required in each round to advance to the finals. Once there, the remaining 4 snakes face their final battle (a race to 3 wins). And the victor will crowned the Platinum Spring League Champion.

Spring League Elite Tournament (March 26th)​

In the second day of competition, streaming live on Saturday, March 26th at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5PM CET, we are back again with 2 wins required in each round leading up to the finals, but this time with the qualified Battlesnakes competing for the title of 2022 Spring League Elite Champion.

Fan Favorite Finalists​

While both Pea Eater and Hovering Hobbs qualified for the Elite Tournament, they garnered a total of 21 cheers during the stream —making them top contenders for the “Spring League Fan Favorite”.

Take a peek at the stats of the two popular competitors below. It’s still anyone's competition (so go and cheer on your favorite Battlesnake)!

Learn more about Pea Eater​

Country: 🇺🇸 | Standing: 5th| Games**: 2,484 | **Win Rate****: 31.56%

Learn more about Hovering Hobbs​

Country: 🇺🇸 | Standing: 14th | Games**: 2,608 | **Win Rate****: 28.6%

Caster Cup Update​

Although this weekend marks the first of the Spring League touranments, last Saturday we celebrated our first event of the Battlesnake Competitive Season at the 2022 Spring Caster Cup Tournament.

With the weight of their continent resting on their shoulders, 32 Battlesnakes entered the area (equally representing North America and Europe) but only one could survive to claim the first title of the season...

Check out Shapeshifter's final battle of the 2022 Spring Caster Cup below.

Thanks for Competing & See You Saturday!​

Before we close, we want to thank you for reading and thank all of the amazing Spring League competitors!

A big shoutout to our amazing community and our amazing Community, and to our wonderful 2022 partners at RBC, New Relic, DigitalOcean and Twilio who make these competitions possible ❤️‌

With three weeks of competition down the leaderboard continues to be dominated by a trio of top tier bhumbas, and the battle is on for the hearts of the Battlesnake Community in the 2022 Spring League competition.

Who are the Top Tier Bhumba's of the Week?​

A quick glance at the leaderboard this week shows little has changed in the top 3 positions, with Jaguar Meets Snake, Combat Reptile and Shapeshifter continuing to fight for Spring League supremacy, putting even more distance between themselves and the remaining Elite Tier Battlesnakes.

A recent game featuring Jaguar Meets Snake, Combat Reptile and Shapeshifter

Despite that distance, however, there is little doubt that the leaderboard is full of some highly competitive Battlesnakes. And so, we thought this week would be a good opportunity to take a look at a few of the talented (yet less well-known) developers and their newly minted Spring League snakes.

Meet pettso​

Developer of Kakemonsteret (17th place overall in Spring League):

Preferred Technologies:

• AWS
• Go
• Self-Hosted

Additional Battlesnakes:

• Banana
• dev-a
• dev-b
• Kakemonsteret-DEV
• lokal
• Snakes on a plane

Fast Fact:

• Spring League marks the first time pettso has placed in the Platinum Tier, with their previous personal best being Silver in the 2021 Fall League 🥈.

Meet freethrill​

Developer of CoolerSnake! (21st place overall in Spring League):

Preferred Technologies:

• GCP
• Python

Additional Battlesnakes:

• CoolSnake!

Fast Fact:

• Spring League marks the first time freethrill has placed in the Platinum Tier, with their previous personal best being Bronze in the 2021 Fall League 🥉.

Meet ClarityCoders​

Developer of ClarityIce (23rd place overall in Spring League):

Preferred Technologies:

• Python

Current Battlesnakes

• AwesomeTest
• ClarityBeefy
• ClarityEyes-GOLD
• Controlled Chaos

Fast Fact:

• ClarityCoders runs a software development focused YouTube Channel, and has even featured Battlesnake in a tutorial which you can checkout below 👇

Who are the current Spring League Fan Favorites?​

After a bit of back-and-forth over the past few weeks between Hovering Hobbs and BwukMaxi, a new competitor entered the mix this week, with Pea Eater making it a three way race for fan favorite and setting 17 as the number of Cheers to beat.

Will BwukMaxi be able to regain their lead, or will they and Hovering Hobbs be forced to concede to this newcomer in the Fan Favorite race?

What are some of the best Battlesnake names?​

While we may never know what sets the current fan favorites apart, there is little doubt about what brings fame, fortune and popularity to many Battlesnakes during the competitive season: an amazing name!

Below are a few of our favorite names so far this season, and we can't wait to see what fun and fabulously punny names are store for the rest of 2022.

A special shoutout goes to Tiger_The_Cat, creator of Wheat Bread and four other culinarily-themed Battlesnakes who you may have seen around the competitive circuit over the past year.

"All of my battlesnakes are named after ingredients. If you put all of these ingredients together, you would get a very good sandwich."

What's happening this week in Battlesnake​

While you can always stay up to date by checking out (or subscribing to) the Battlesnake Community Calendar, we wanted to be sure to give you a quick update on what is happening this week on Battlesnake.TV.

Deep Learning - Thurs, Mar 10th at 1pm PT / 4pm ET****

Join Aurora for the first ever Battlesnake 'Book Club' as she explores the book 'Thinking in Systems' by Donella H. Meadows live on Battlesnake.TV.

Casters Cup Tournament - Sat, Mar 12 at 9am PT / 12pm ET****

Its North America versus Europe this Saturday on Battlesnake.TV as the Snake Pit Live! team brings you the exciting conclusion to the 2022 Spring Caster Cup.

Check out the Tournament brackets for yourself over at play.battlesnake.com

Good Luck and Happy Battlesnaking!​

As always, before we close off this update we want to thank you for reading and to wish good luck to all the Spring League competitors!

We'd also like to send a huge thank you to our amazing Community, and to our wonderful 2022 partners at RBC, New Relic, DigitalOcean and Twilio who make these competitions possible ❤️‌

While for many, including ourselves, December marked the final month of what can only be described as a tumultuous year, it also marked the return of an exciting annual Battlesnake competition, the 2nd annual Winter Classic Tournament, which streamed live on twitch.tv/battlesnakeofficial on Saturday, December 19, 2020.