🎹 Neon Tiles - Amazing Grace

#rhythmgame #game #music

A neon-styled 4-lane rhythm game built around the most-sung hymn in the English-speaking world — "Amazing Grace" — the chart was transcribed directly from a 2-part SATB sheet music arrangement and runs through the verse once, 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 dress the centuries-old hymn in arcade neon while keeping its quiet, reverent pulse intact.

🎮 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

• 19 measures of melody transcribed from a 2-part SATB choral arrangement (SOPRANO ALTO + TENOR BASS). The chart follows the soprano line — the top voice — so the iconic melody comes through cleanly.
• Every note plays at its actual pitch in G major across a comfortable melodic octave + a step (D4 → D5), using only the song's six diatonic pitches.
• Tempo is ♩=80 in 3/4 time, with each game beat = one eighth note (375 ms) — a deliberately slower-than-marked tempo (the score notes ♩=112) chosen to honor the hymn's traditional singable pulse.

🎶 Hold-Heavy Hymn Pulse in 3/4

• The chart is dominated by hold tiles (23 of 36 entries) rather than rapid taps — Amazing Grace breathes through its sustained syllables.
• The signature pickup D4 quarter on "A-" ("A-maz-ing grace") starts the chart, so the first tap is the song's first sung note.
• The final "see" cadence at m18→m19 is a single G4 held for 10 beats (dotted half note tied across the barline = 5 full quarter beats) — a long, ringing finish to match the hymn's most contemplative moment.

🚀 Progressive Difficulty + Cycle Flash

• BPM increases by +12.5% per cycle (80 → 90 → 101 → 114...). Even cycle 4 stays well inside hymn singing range.
• Each cycle is also transposed up by a whole step (2 semitones), sending the prayer ever upward.
• 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, a 4-beat hold = 40, the final 10-beat ringing G4 = 100).
• 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 (staff=1/voice=1 filtering for the soprano line + cross-measure tie merge for the final ringing G4).

💡 Things to Try

• Feel the 3/4 hymn pulse — ONE-two-three per measure carries you across the bar lines the way a congregation would sway through it.
• The first tile is the pickup D4 on "A-" of "A-maz-ing" — no count-in, the prayer starts the moment you press START.
• The chart lives in only 6 pitches (D4, E4, G4, A4, B4, D5) — the simplest melodic vocabulary in the batch. Lean into the repetition.
• The final G4 held for 10 beats at m18→m19 is the song's emotional payoff — let the hold ring out fully before the cycle restarts a whole step higher.