🎹 Neon Tiles - Happy Birthday

#rhythmgame #game #music

A neon-styled 4-lane rhythm game built around the most-sung song on Earth — "Happy Birthday to You" — the chart was transcribed directly from sheet music and runs through the full four-line verse twice. Cyberpunk visuals with a cyan→magenta gradient palette, ambient drifting tiles on the start and game-over screens, and the Orbitron typeface turn the candle-lit classic into something the synthwave dimension can throw a party with.

🎮 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.
• Pause — Space or P
• Mute / Unmute — M
• Quick start / restart — Press D while any overlay is showing.

✨ Features

🎵 Real Score, Real Pitch

• 9 measures played twice (18 measures total per cycle), transcribed directly from sheet music — both repeats of the "Happy birthday to you / Happy birthday to you / Happy birthday dear ___ / Happy birthday to you" verse plus the final cadence.
• Every note plays at its actual pitch in C major across a clean octave (C4 → C5), with a single chromatic A♯/B♭ at m7 — the colorful "dear ___" lift the song is famous for.
• Tempo is ♩=90 in 3/4 time, with each game beat = one 8th note (333 ms) — the gentle waltz pulse keeps each "Happy birthday" phrase singable.

🎶 Hold-Heavy Waltz with Built-In Breath

• The chart is dominated by 2-beat quarter-note holds rather than rapid taps — Happy Birthday lives in its sustained syllables, not in fast runs.
• The chart's signature "Hap-py" pickup (originally a dotted-eighth + 16th) is rendered as two clean 8th notes back-to-back, so the rhythm reads at a glance instead of requiring sub-tile precision.
• Long cadential notes have been shortened to leave a built-in breath: the m2 / m4 "to you" half note is now dotted quarter note + eighth rest, and the final m8 "to you" dotted half note is half note + quarter rest — every line of the song ends with a tiny pocket of silence before the next.

🚀 Progressive Difficulty + Cycle Flash

• BPM increases by +12.5% per cycle (90 → 101 → 114 → 128...). The gentle base tempo means even cycle 3 stays in singable territory.
• Each cycle is also transposed up by a whole step (2 semitones), sending the birthday wish into ever-higher keys.
• 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).
• 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.
• Chart auto-generated from MusicXML via a custom Python converter, with automatic repeat-barline and volta unfolding plus a custom step that shortens long cadential notes to insert breath rests.

💡 Things to Try

• Feel the 3/4 waltz pulse rather than counting individual tiles — ONE-two-three per measure carries you across the bar lines naturally.
• Listen for the chromatic A♯/B♭ at m7 ("Happy birthday dear ___") — it's the song's one moment of non-diatonic color, and the chart preserves it exactly.
• The built-in breath rests at the end of each "to you" line are deliberate — let the hold ring out, then exhale on the rest before the next phrase.
• By cycle 2 you've heard the same 18-bar phrase 4 times — but transposed up a whole step. Try humming along to ground yourself in the new key.