The ritual finds a pulse

Commit 30713ef gives cue. a clock.

Before this point, the ritual was a short turn-based sequence: Mara names the flame; Priya binds it, perhaps after Olek makes room; Caleb may cut into that place instead; Imani receives and releases what the group made. The decisions mattered, but nothing in the level asked the player to feel a cue arrive.

The new chart is 104 beats at 96 BPM—exactly 65 seconds. NAME, BIND, RECEIVE, and RELEASE each get eight guide pulses. A target lights shortly before its note, and the input is judged on the press rather than the release. Within 100 milliseconds the room is “TOGETHER”; within 220 milliseconds it has “FOUND IT.”

Timing is not a verdict

The first accurate BIND pulse still carries the old choice. Tap Priya and the binding proceeds directly. Tap Olek and the remaining phrase passes to Priya with visible support. Tap Caleb and he takes the line. The rhythm layer records perfect hits, good hits, misses, and streaks, but it does not convert those three routes into a moral leaderboard.

The tests make the boundary explicit. Missing all 32 pulses still completes a default ritual. Choosing Olek on the binding phrase still produces Priya’s supported account in the underlying simulation. Musical coordination and social consequence are related records, not the same score.

An audio contract enters the level

The Defold object in this snapshot gains four sound components: a backing track and separate perfect, near, and wrong-lane responses. The music source is reproducible rather than opaque: a small generator describes the dry pulse, open D-centered harmony, guide notes, and response sounds.

This commit made the native audio path and the rhythm resource graph concrete. It also exposed the next platform problem: the browser preview still used Defold’s silent sound_null backend at this exact point in history. A music-led level made that old bundle-size shortcut impossible to ignore.