Downbeat is a rhythm dodge game built entirely around the jam's theme track. Danger zones appear on the arena, telegraph for one second, and then strike exactly on the beat of the music. Be somewhere else when they land.

Move with the mouse, touch, or WASD/arrows. Dash with Space or click. A dash timed on the beat lasts longer and recharges almost instantly, and dashing straight through a strike scores a graze bonus. Collect gold notes to build your combo and play the melody in the key of the song.

The difficulty follows the track: sparse hits in the intro, rotating sweeps in the build, and a dense drop. Everything is deterministic, so you can learn the song and master it. There is an Assist mode, a Reduce Flashing option for photosensitive players, and an audio-offset slider to match your speakers.

Controls: mouse / WASD / arrows to move, Space or click to dash, Esc to pause.

How to run: unzip Downbeat-Windows.zip and run Downbeat.exe (Windows 10/11; uses the built-in WebView2 runtime).

AI disclosure: This game contains AI-generated content. The game's code and design were created with AI assistance (Claude by Anthropic, via Claude Code). The AI wrote the HTML/JavaScript game code, designed the hazard patterns and visuals, and generated the short sound-effect blips in code with the Web Audio API. The AI also analysed the theme track (tempo and key) to sync the game to it. No AI image, music or voice generation was used. The theme track by Jason Grace is used unmodified as provided by the jam, only inside this entry.

How it was built: a single HTML file using the Canvas 2D API and the Web Audio API, with no engine or external libraries. Hazard timing is locked to the audio clock, so strikes land on the song's beats (120 BPM, F minor). A seeded generator builds the 118-hazard chart, and an offline solver verified every section is survivable. The desktop build is a small Neutralino.js wrapper around the same HTML.

Credits: Theme track by Jason Grace (thatgamejam #02). Sound effects synthesised at runtime. Desktop wrapper: Neutralino.js (MIT).