Sorry for my late reply, I saw your article about snake game on your blog, this is an impressive collection ! Thank you very much for adding my game to it. I hope to do more snake game on the future !
I didn't find a way to send DM on itch.io so I allow myself to answer you here.
My first inspiration for this game was the cellular automaton like the game of life of conway.
It is something that I was interested in I thought it could fit the 'only one' theme of jam I was participating just by replacing the classic black and white grid with a 0 and 1 grid.
Combining this with a snake game was a way to also have reliable game mechanics (eat to grow, don't eat yourself, ...) that the players will immediately understand.
Looking for idea for having both, I found that using the snake as a list of commands could be nice because it can quickly produce a lot of interesting complexity (where you move affect what actions you will execute that affect where you will move...).
I usually prefer making sandbox game but here it seems to me that having some puzzle levels was the best way to introduce the ideas of the game (but I still added a sandbox mode at the end).
To make the puzzles, I just tried randomly different configurations and chose the one where the snake ends up to a place that will look like unexpected for the players while gradually adding new mechanics.
The Turing machine was not my first inspiration but it ends up looking a little like a 2D Turing machine so I chose this name.
Hope it will be helpful ! Let me know how to contact you if you have more questions.