Rolling Horizon Co-evolution for Snake AI Competition

The Snake game, a classic in the gaming world, gains new dimensions with the Snake AI competition, where two players controlled by AI algorithms can now compete simultaneously in the same game session. This competition holds significance in advancing our understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. In the 2020 and 2021 Snake AI competitions, popular algorithms, using graph-based search or heuristic strategies, demonstrate competitive performance, such as the A* algorithm, Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). Contrary to these heuristic approaches, the Rolling Horizon Co-evolution Algorithm (RHCA), characterised by its core principles of rolling horizon evaluation and co-evolution, maintains two populations, one for each player, to co-evolve with each other without reliance on heuristics. RHCA has been verified its effectiveness in a two-player spaceship game. In this paper, we extend the RHCA application to the two-player Snake AI game, comparing it with other state-of-the-art methods. Additionally, we introduce various obstacles to create different complex scenarios, ensuring a comprehensive analysis. Experimental results reveal RHCA’s superior and stable performance, especially in resource-constrained and complex scenarios. Furthermore, an analysis of RHCA’s behaviours across maps with diverse obstacle scenarios highlights its ability to make intelligent decisions in competing with state-of-the-art methods.