🎹 Neon Tiles - The Wheels On The Bus

#rhythmgame #game #music

A neon-styled 4-lane rhythm game built around the road-trip favorite "The Wheels on the Bus" — the chart was transcribed directly from sheet music and runs through the song's verse twice for a complete singalong cycle. Cyberpunk visuals with a cyan→magenta gradient palette, ambient drifting tiles on the start and game-over screens, and the Orbitron typeface make the wheels go round and round in a brand new key.

🎮 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 — Some tiles fire a quick two-note unison pulse from a single tap, capturing the "round and round" repeated-note motion.
• Pause — Space or P
• Mute / Unmute — M
• Quick start / restart — Press D while any overlay is showing.

✨ Features

🎵 Real Score, Real Pitch

• 8 measures played twice (16 measures total per cycle), transcribed directly from sheet music — opens with a pickup note ("The…") and runs through the full verse including the "round and round / round and round" climb and the cadence on "all through the town."
• Every note plays at its actual pitch in G major (D4 / F♯4 / G4 / A4 / B4 / D5 — a comfortable singing range).
• Tempo is ♩=90, with each game beat = one 8th note (333 ms) — friendly mid-tempo pace that matches the song's gentle bus-ride feel.

🎶 Burst Tiles for the "Round and Round"

• The verse's signature "round and round" 16th-note pulses appear as unison burst tiles (G4+G4) in measures 1 and 5, capturing the repeated-note feel without demanding multiple taps.
• A pickup burst on the "town" cadence (D4) gives the verse its rhythmic kick into the next phrase.
• 2- and 3-beat hold tiles land on the long words ("through," "town") for satisfying releases.

🚀 Progressive Difficulty + Cycle Flash

• BPM increases by +12.5% per cycle (90 → 101 → 112.5 → 124...). The repeated-pass structure means by cycle 2 you're hearing the same melody twice in a row but at noticeably different tempos and keys.
• Each cycle is also transposed up by a whole step (2 semitones), sending the bus through ever-brighter 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. The chart's longest hold is the 3-beat G4 on "town" at the end of each verse.

🎼 Scoring

• 10 points per beat cleared (so the 3-beat "town" hold = 30, bursts count as a single tile each).
• 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 (the "play twice" structure is unfolded directly into the melody array).

💡 Things to Try

• The verse opens with a pickup note at m0 (a single D4 before the downbeat) — set your fingers up before the first full measure arrives so you don't get caught off-guard.
• Listen for the "round and round" burst tiles in measures 1 and 5 — they're identical, so you can plan ahead for the second one as soon as you've cleared the first.
• The 3-beat G4 hold on "town" at m8 is the chart's biggest release moment — let it ring out as the song's natural cadence.
• The repeated-verse structure means cycle 2's first half lands at a 12.5% higher BPM than what you just played 8 bars earlier — a great way to feel the speedup directly.