What it is

Note Perfect is a memory game of lights and notes. Four birds sit in a tree at dusk: an owl at the bottom, a cardinal on the left, a swallow on the right and a finch at the top, each with its own colour, shape, place and note. The notes rise from the owl, through the cardinal and the swallow, to the finch. The birds sing a tune one note at a time; you tap them in the same order, and the tune grows by one note every round.

Get one wrong and the bird you should have tapped lights up and sings its note, with no buzz, and the game ends kindly: it tells you how many steps you followed and the longest this session, and plays back the tune you followed, drawn as a little score.

Add one

Or play Add one, with two to four people passing a tablet. Each player hears the whole tune, repeats it, then taps any bird to add a note of their own, and every player hears the tune at the same pace. A wrong note puts that player out, and the last one in wins. At the end the game plays back the whole tune you made together, with each player’s notes numbered when there is room.

Never too fast

Alone, the tune starts at a patient pace, a note every 0.72 seconds, quickens a little with each note it gains past the fifth, and never plays faster than two and a half notes a second. In Add one, every replay keeps one steady pace, a note every 0.62 seconds. Every note has a dark gap after it, so the same bird twice reads as twice. No clock runs while you think: the game waits for your next tap.

No stretch of just over a second holds more than three flashes, and that includes fast tapping: a bird tapped faster than that still sings and glows on its perch, but its halo stays off. Every note is a light as well as a sound, so the game can be played with the sound off.

How to play

StartTap anywhere
Repeat the tuneTap the birds in order
Play with othersAdd one, then Tap to join
Stop a group gameEnd game, two quick taps, between turns
SoundThe speaker, top right

Watch and listen while the birds sing, then tap them in the same order. Until someone touches it, the game plays by itself; a tap anywhere starts a game. A tap counts when your finger lifts, one finger at a time, and a tap anywhere in a bird’s quarter of the tree counts for that bird. At the end, tap Play again.

Add one starts a game for two, and Tap to join adds a third and a fourth during the first round. Pass the tablet: each player taps Ready, hears the tune, repeats it, then adds a note. Between turns, two quick taps on End game stop the game.

On a desktop, a click is a tap, and only the left button plays. Or use the keys: the arrow keys, or W, A, S and D, are the four birds, laid out like the tree: up is the finch, left the cardinal, right the swallow and down the owl. Enter or Space starts a game, says Ready and plays again. G starts Add one when no game is under way. In Add one, J joins during the first round, and Escape twice, quickly, ends the game between turns. M turns sound on and off at any time.

What isn’t settled yet

The pace is a starting point: alone, a note every 0.72 seconds at first and never more than two and a half a second, and in Add one a note every 0.62 seconds. Neither has yet been tried with many players. The four voices are synthesized, a simple whistled note for each bird, and whether they are easy to tell apart, and pleasant over a long tune, has not yet been judged by ear. There is no slower setting, and no other birds or modes yet.

Build Log

Credits and licences

No third-party engine — it draws to a plain canvas. The typefaces it does use are embedded under the SIL Open Font Licence, with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Cover drawn from the game’s own bird and tree code.

Note Perfect is original work by Launchway Games.