dance-off

how it plays

a boombox kicks in, four lanes of arrow notes slide down the dance floor, and the birthday blob has sixty seconds to hit each one as it crosses the bar. across the floor a rival is doing the same thing, badly, with enormous confidence. a crowd stands behind the rope and reacts to every move.

1. 1watch the lanesleft, down, up, right. each note is coloured by its lane.
2. 2hit the barpress the arrow (or tap the pad) as the note lands on the bar.
3. 3fill the meterfinish with the dance meter past 60% to win the round.

every hit is judged perfect, great or ok, and a miss is a miss. perfect timing builds a combo and pushes the dance meter up; whiffs cost the combo. the meter at the end decides the round, and the crowd's mood multiplies the score, so a clean finish counts for more than frantic mashing ever will. (we checked: mashing loses.)

controls

• laptop: the arrow keys, or W A S D if that's where your fingers live.
• phone or tablet: four big pads along the bottom of the screen. tap the one that matches the note.
• pause: P or Esc. the booth waits, the song goes underwater until you're back.

the timing windows are the same on every device, so a phone player isn't playing a harder game than someone on a keyboard. the chart gets denser and throws doubles at higher difficulty, but the windows never shrink.

the rival is a friend

this is the part that makes it a birthday game and not just a rhythm game. once three or more friends have left cards on the site, the rival across the floor is one of them: their name on the tag, their blob colour, their hat and their eyes. the crowd behind the rope fills with the rest of the friends. a new round can pick a new rival, and the same round shows the same friends on every device, so two people comparing scores were dancing against the same person.

the song

the music is original and made entirely in code: oscillators, one noise buffer and a few filters, no audio files, no samples, nothing borrowed. the song is the game's clock, so the notes sit exactly on the beat even when the device is busy. it is the one place on the site where music is the whole stage: it plays even in the calmer motion mode, and goes quiet only when someone mutes it.

difficulty

rounds start at party, which is busy but friendly. once the birthday person's best score reaches 80% of a strong round, the crowd asks for more and the next round steps up to wild: more notes, more doubles, same windows. nobody gets stuck on a wall, and nobody who's good at rhythm games gets bored by round three.

where it lives

the dance-off is one of 12 booths at the festival on the birthday island. the birthday person can walk up to the booth and press E to play right there on the island, or open it from the festival page, which lists every game with their best score and how many times they've played. finishing rounds earns LOVE and stickers for their sticker sheet, which is mostly an excuse to keep playing.

it works on a laptop or a phone, takes a minute, and is very good with an audience: if you're doing a virtual birthday party, have the birthday person share their screen and let the group heckle the rival by name.