Handheld Seven-Segment Puzzle Game

David Johnson-Davies' latest Technoblogy project is a handheld puzzle/logic maze game. It uses a series of seven-segment characters to show the game's state and four push buttons control moves. There's also a buzzer for audible feedback.

The goal of the game is to get from your current position on the 4x4 digit board, indicated by the decimal point, to the ending "H" icon. You can move up/down/left/right, but are restricted to moving only the number of spaces indicated on your current position. This means that one might have to take a circuitous route to complete the challenge in the least number of moves.

As Johnson-Davies noted in his blog post, this sort of game could be made with an OLED or TFT display, but he felt (correctly, in my humble opinion) that this sort of old-school interface was more interesting. The device is powered by two AA cells, while processing is provided by a 32-pin TQFP format AVR128DA32 microcontroller. This chip features exactly the 26 I/O lines needed for segment control, plus inputs and a buzzer.

Although Johnson-Davies often prototypes on a breadboard, here he decided to go straight to a PCB per the rather large number of connections. He chose a red solder mask for it to match up with the screen’s glow. The device looks like a fun amusement from a gaming point of view, and an interesting device if you want to build one yourself. Code and PCB files can be found in the write-up, along with background info to explain how it works.