Sound without ticks

Puzzle games are often played in quiet places: on the sofa, on the bus, next to someone who is asleep. So our sounds follow one rule, set early by Emre, who listens to every sound himself: no repetitive high clicks. No ticking, no rattling, no streams of tiny chirps.

Made in code

Every sound in our eight games is made while you play, with the Web Audio API, from simple ingredients: soft sine tones, a plucked kalimba-like note, a warm chord. There are no recorded sound files at all, which also keeps the games small.

Tonal and rising

Instead of a click for every action, our games play notes. In Cat Corner each cat you place plays the next note of a pentatonic scale, so a puzzle climbs towards its end. In Surprise Cube the note rises with your progress and your combo. A win is a warm chord with a little arpeggio.

Spaced out

Some actions happen many times a second, like painting crosses across a row or bees carrying away cubes. Those sounds are throttled: at least 120 milliseconds apart, and softer the more often they come. In Topple! a collapsing tower of crates becomes a few soft, low thuds instead of a hundred clatters.

Soft at the top

Our games run their sounds through a gentle low-pass filter that rounds off the sharpest high frequencies, and keep the overall volume modest. Mistakes get a low, soft thud, never a buzzer.

Music is optional

Every game has a quiet music loop, and it starts switched off. You turn it on if you want it.