🎹 Neon Tiles - Row Row Row Your Boat

#rhythmgame #game #music

A neon-styled 4-lane rhythm game built around the eternal "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" — the chart was transcribed directly from sheet music and runs through the full 8-bar round 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 gentle pond song into a 6/8 cruise through synthwave.

🎮 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 — Most tiles in this chart fire 2- or 3-note flourishes from a single tap, capturing the song's 6/8 sub-beat motion (especially the "Mer-ri-ly mer-ri-ly" triplets).
• 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 — both passes of the full "Row, row, row your boat / Gently down the stream / Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily / Life is but a dream" round.
• Every note plays at its actual pitch in C major across an octave-spanning hexatonic range (C4 / D4 / E4 / F4 / G4 / C5 — six notes, no chromatic detours).
• Tempo is ♩.=120 in compound 6/8 time — the dotted-quarter feel of two beats per measure rather than six counted eighths. Each tile = one main beat (500 ms).

🎶 Dotted-Quarter Slot Mode — Unique in the Batch

• This chart is the only one in batch0513 that uses dotted-quarter slot mode: 1 tile = 1 dotted-quarter beat (♩.), matching the natural compound-time pulse of 6/8 rather than the underlying 8th note grid.
• This compresses the melody into just 28 tiles per cycle — the most compact chart in the batch — while preserving every rhythmic event through bursts.
• The "Mer-ri-ly mer-ri-ly" runs at m5–m6 become 3-note same-pitch burst tiles: a single tap fires three same-pitch eighths in rapid succession, capturing the rolling triplet motion in one gesture per main beat.
• The verse's mixed quarter+eighth rhythms ("Row your boat", "Gently down the", "Life is but a") are rendered as 2:1 timing bursts — the second pitch lands at exactly the 2/3 sub-slot position, preserving the song's groove without splitting it across tiles.
• The "stream" / "dream" dotted half note cadences at m4 and m8 are 2-tile holds — full dotted-half sustains that let each phrase ring out before the next.

🚀 Progressive Difficulty + Cycle Flash

• BPM increases by +12.5% per cycle (♩.=120 → 135 → 152 → 171...). The compact 28-tile chart means each cycle finishes quickly, so speedup ramps up fast.
• Each cycle is also transposed up by a whole step (2 semitones), sending the pentatonic-feeling melody into 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, 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 on any miss.
• Forgiving holds (75% duration counts) and smart lane distribution that avoids consecutive same-lane spawns.

🎼 Scoring

• 10 points per beat cleared (so a 2-beat dotted-half 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 dotted-quarter slot mode extended to handle compound 6/8 time naturally.

💡 Things to Try

• This is the chart's fewest-tile song (28 per cycle) — try to feel the 2-beats-per-measure compound pulse rather than counting individual taps.
• The m5–m6 "Mer-ri-ly mer-ri-ly" bursts are the chart's most rhythmically active moment — each tap fires a rapid 3-note triplet on the same pitch, so the gesture is one finger-flick per main beat.
• The m4 "stream" and m8 "dream" 2-tile holds are the chart's only pure sustains — let your finger ride them fully for the satisfying full-phrase resolution.
• Try humming "Row, row, row your boat" while watching the tiles fall — you'll notice each main beat lines up with exactly one tile, even though the syllables underneath are subdividing in 2:1 or 1:1:1 patterns.