🎹 Neon Tiles - Yankee Doodle

#rhythmgame #game #music

A neon-styled 4-lane rhythm game built around the colonial fife-and-drum classic "Yankee Doodle" — the chart was transcribed directly from sheet music and runs through the full 16-bar march top to bottom. Cyberpunk visuals with a cyan→magenta gradient palette, ambient drifting tiles on the start and game-over screens, and the Orbitron typeface march the revolutionary anthem straight into the synthwave parade.

🎮 How to Play

• Tap / Click — Tap tiles on mobile, or click them with the mouse on desktop.
• Keyboard — Use A S D F for the four lanes (left → right).
• Hold notes — For taller tiles, keep the key/finger pressed until the tile clears.
• Burst tiles — A few tiles fire a quick two-note flourish from a single tap, capturing the song's neighbor-tone passing 8ths.
• Pause — Space or P
• Mute / Unmute — M
• Quick start / restart — Press D while any overlay is showing.

✨ Features

🎵 Real Score, Real Pitch

• 16 measures played straight through — both halves of the march (the verse "Yankee Doodle went to town..." and the chorus "Yankee Doodle keep it up, Yankee Doodle dandy...").
• Every note plays at its actual pitch in G major across a comfortable melodic ninth (B3 → C5), making it the widest melodic range in the batch.
• Tempo is ♩=180 in 4/4 time, with each game beat = one quarter note (333 ms) — the fastest tempo in the batch, giving the chart proper marching-band snap.

🎶 Quarter-Note March + Cadential Snap

• The chart uses quarter-note slot mode — 1 tile = 1 quarter beat — so the visual rhythm reads exactly like a fife-and-drum tap pattern.
• The song's iconic half + quarter + quarter-rest cadence ("Doodle dan-dy ___" / "girls be han-dy ___") lands at m8 and m16 — a long held G4, a short G4 tap, then a quarter rest. Two clean march-style endings.
• 3 sub-slot bursts at m9, m11, m13 capture the neighbor-tone 8th-note passing figures ("Father and I went..." / "There we saw..." style ornaments) without breaking the quarter-note grid.
• The score's whole notes have been split into half + half rest so even long sustained moments keep the march bouncing rather than stopping dead.

🚀 Progressive Difficulty + Cycle Flash

• BPM increases by +12.5% per cycle (180 → 203 → 228 → 256...). At a base of ♩=180, cycle 2 already crosses ♩=200 — full-on marching-band pace.
• Each cycle is also transposed up by a whole step (2 semitones), sending the brass-band tune into ever-higher fife range.
• Cycle transition flash: every new cycle pops up a centered CYCLE 2 / ♪ +2 · ⚡ +12% banner with a scale-and-glow animation.

🎨 Neon Polish

• Cyan → blue → purple → magenta per-lane gradient, glowing tube borders, scanline textures inside the active press zone, ambient drifting tiles behind every overlay, and an animated START button that slides down into the game.
• Visible miss feedback: red flash + dissonant low buzz with downward portamento on any miss.
• Forgiving holds (75% duration counts, soft gradient fade at the top edge) and smart lane distribution that avoids consecutive same-lane spawns.

🎼 Scoring

• 10 points per beat cleared (so a 2-beat hold = 20), with bursts counted as a single tile.
• High score saved locally.

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Pure HTML / CSS / JavaScript, zero dependencies, single self-contained .html file — drop it anywhere and play.
• HTML5 Canvas + Web Audio API square-wave synthesis (with separate envelopes for the rapid burst sequences).
• Chart auto-generated from MusicXML via a custom Python converter, with automatic repeat-barline and volta unfolding plus a whole-note-halving option to keep the march moving.

💡 Things to Try

• This is the fastest chart in the batch (♩=180) — great for a wake-up run, or for testing whether your tap reflexes are revolution-ready.
• The m8 and m16 cadential endings (half + quarter + quarter rest on G4) are the song's natural breath points — let the long G4 ring, snap the short G4, then breathe through the rest before the next half begins.
• The 3 sub-slot bursts at m9, m11, m13 are the only moments where neighbor-tone 8ths interrupt the quarter grid — they're the "Yankee Doodle" rhythmic signature pickup figures, so feel them as a tiny accelerando within an otherwise-steady beat.
• Yankee Doodle has the widest melodic range in the batch (B3 → C5, a major 9th). By cycle 3 (transposed up a minor third) you're hitting D4 → E♭5 — the high notes start reaching for the rafters.