🎹 Neon Tiles - Old Macdonald

#rhythmgame #game #music

A neon-styled 4-lane rhythm game built around the barnyard classic "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" — the chart was transcribed directly from sheet music and runs through the whole verse-and-"E-I-E-I-O" loop 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 turn the farm classic into something Old MacDonald himself would have a hard time recognizing.

🎮 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 song's repeated-note "E-I-E-I-O" chant.
• 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 twice (32 measures total per cycle), transcribed directly from sheet music — the full verse ("Old MacDonald had a farm…"), the "E-I-E-I-O" refrain, the "and on his farm he had a cow" middle, and a second pass through the chorus.
• Every note plays at its actual pitch in E major (B4 / C♯5 / E5 / F♯5 / G♯5 — the song's bright open-fifth feel).
• Tempo is ♩=75, with each game beat = one 8th note (400 ms) — the slowest base tempo in the series, leaving lots of breathing room around the song's natural sing-along pace.

🎶 Burst Tiles for the "E-I-E-I-O"

• The "E-I-E-I-O" refrain features rapid repeated-note 16ths that would be brutal to tap individually. The chart packs these into burst tiles (the unison E5+E5 / B4+B4 pulses) where one tap fires a two-note flourish, capturing the song's chant-like rhythm without demanding inhuman taps per second.
• Bursts cluster heavily in measures 8, 9, 11, and 12 — exactly where the "E-I-E-I-O" lands in the music.
• 2-beat held cadence notes at the end of each phrase give the verse its natural breath.

🚀 Progressive Difficulty + Cycle Flash

• BPM increases by +12.5% per cycle (75 → 84 → 94 → 103...). At a base tempo this gentle, you can stay several cycles deep before the song genuinely speeds up to "fast."
• Each cycle is also transposed up by a whole step (2 semitones), lifting Old MacDonald's farm 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, 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 (the "play twice" structure is unfolded directly into the melody array).

💡 Things to Try

• The "E-I-E-I-O" burst cluster in measures 11–12 is the chart's busiest section — try to feel the four-tap pattern as one gesture rather than four separate taps.
• The repeat structure means you'll play the same 16-bar phrase twice per cycle, so by your second time through cycle 1 you should have the lane pattern memorized — use that to set up your fingers for cycle 2's transposed version.
• At ♩=75 base tempo this is one of the gentlest charts in the series; great for warming up before diving into the faster ones.