Play Sirensong — a free Greek-myth rhythm game played with the oars
Sirensong: The Course of Odysseus is a free browser rhythm game built on Homer's Odyssey. You are the keleustes, the rowing master of Odysseus's ship, and the only man aboard who can still hear. Wax is in every other ear, so the oars depend on your beat. Strike the falling strokes in time, refuse the violet lure notes, and keep the ship's course off the rocks for thirty chapters across four acts.
The story starts where the poem does: Circe tells Odysseus what waits at the Sirens' meadow, and the crew stops their ears with beeswax. Nobody thinks about the man who has to count the strokes. A ship is not rowed by thirty men who cannot hear; it is rowed by one drum and thirty backs. So you keep your ears open, you take the drum, and you row into a song that knows your name, your mother's voice and the exact things you would like to be told. The Sirens do not want to kill you. They want you to stop rowing, and they are patient.
How a chapter works
- Read the water. Four lanes are four banks of oars. Pearls fall toward the ring at the stern; strike the lane when a pearl crosses it.
- Judge the stroke. Within 46 milliseconds of the beat is perfect, within 94 is good. A perfect stroke adds half a point of course, a good stroke a quarter.
- Refuse the bait. Violet notes are hollow, ringed with an eye and ringed again with a slow pulse. They are the Sirens' version of your stroke. Touching one costs five points of course and every point of your combo.
- Hold the rope. A ribbon note must be held for its whole length. Release early and the sheet goes slack: a slip, a lost combo and three and a half points of course.
- Answer with two oars. From Act IV some beats are chords. Two lanes, one stroke, no hesitation.
The four acts
| Act | Chapters | Where you are | What the song does |
|---|---|---|---|
| I · The Waxing Shore | 1–8 | Out of Aeaea, into open water | Quarter notes, 84 to 96 BPM, one voice far away |
| II · The Lure | 9–16 | The meadow comes into sight | Bait notes appear; the song uses voices you know |
| III · The Bone Isle | 17–24 | The white meadow, close enough to see what it is made of | Rope notes: hold the stroke or lose the sail |
| IV · The Throat | 25–30 | Inside the strait, under a roof of rock | Two-oar chords, 126 to 150 BPM, no rest |
Why the difficulty curve is honest
Every chart is generated from a fixed seed with a measured target: strokes per second, a hard minimum gap of 170 milliseconds on any single lane, and a cap on consecutive sixteenth notes. That means no chapter can ask for two taps on the same oar faster than a hand can move, and no chart is assembled from a different rulebook than the one the player gets. The tempo and the density climb chapter by chapter: 1.2 strokes per second in the first chapter, 4.3 in the last, with the act openings deliberately easier than the act finales. The result is a curve you can feel rather than read.
The same guarantee covers the music. The chart is not laid on top of a recording; the band and the pearls come from the same clock. The kick, the frame drum, the bass, the pad and the siren air are all scheduled from the chapter's tempo grid, and every stroke you land plays a pearl note from the act's pentatonic scale. You are not matching a song. You are playing it.
Strategy that actually works
- Watch the ring, not the pearl. Your eye should sit on the hit line. Pearls arrive there whether you look at them or not.
- Do not mash. An empty stroke costs no health, but it breaks the combo and the multiplier with it. A missed note in a quiet bar is cheaper than panic.
- Trade one good for two perfects. The course gain from a good stroke is half of a perfect, and the score is nearly half. If a section is too fast, let the awkward note go rather than arrive late on the next three.
- Bait lives in the gaps. Violet notes are placed where your hand wants to move anyway. If a lane has been quiet for a beat, expect the eye.
- Use the countdown. Four bars of drums run before the first pearl. Find the pulse there, not on the first note.
Technical notes
Everything is drawn and everything is synthesised. There is no image file in the game, no audio file, no font download and no third-party script. The sea, the moon, the island, the three sirens, the deck, the pearls and the violet bait are painted on Canvas 2D from the same state the engine judges, and the music is built from oscillators and noise buffers through the Web Audio API. Charts are deterministic: a seeded generator, fixed judgement windows and a fixed-timestep clock, so a chapter plays the same way twice. The game runs in portrait or landscape on phone, tablet and desktop with touch, mouse or keyboard (D F J K, arrows, or 1–4), and progress, stars and your endless record are stored locally under sirensong.voyage.v1. Nothing is uploaded, because there is no server.
Sirensong — frequently asked questions
What is Sirensong: The Course of Odysseus?
Sirensong is a free browser rhythm game built on Homer's Odyssey. You are the keleustes, the rowing master of Odysseus's ship, and the only man aboard who can still hear. Wax is in every other ear, so the oars depend on your beat. Strike the falling strokes in time, refuse the violet lure notes, and keep the ship's course off the rocks for thirty chapters across four acts.
Do I need to download anything or install a song pack?
No. Every drum, bass line, pad and chime is synthesised in your browser with the Web Audio API, and every chart is generated from a fixed seed. There are no audio files, no plugins and no third-party scripts. The game starts in under a second on a normal connection and works offline once the page is cached.
How do I play on a phone?
Tap and hold anywhere in one of the four lane columns. On a desktop you can use D F J K, the arrow keys, or the number keys 1 to 4. Each column is one bank of oars, so tapping the left column answers the left oar. The game is designed for portrait first and it also fills a landscape window.
What are the violet notes?
Violet notes are the Sirens' bait. They shine exactly like your own stroke but they are hollow and ringed with an eye. Do not touch them. Hitting one costs five points of course, breaks your combo and takes forty points off your score. They first appear in Act II, when the Sirens stop singing to the sea and start singing to you.
What is the Course meter?
The Course meter is your health bar and the ship's heading at the same time. A perfect stroke gains half a point, a good stroke a quarter, and a missed stroke costs between three and six points depending on the act. If it reaches zero the bow swings into the rocks and the chapter ends. Clean playing pushes it back up, so a bad patch is recoverable but a careless one is not.
How many chapters are there?
Thirty, split into four acts of eight, eight, eight and six. Act I is the Waxing Shore, Act II is the Lure, Act III is the Bone Isle and Act IV is the Throat. Tempo climbs from 84 to 150 beats per minute and note density from about 1.2 to 4.3 strokes per second.
Is there an endless mode?
Yes. The Endless Strait unlocks after chapter thirty and keeps going in waves. Each wave adds three beats per minute and roughly a tenth of a stroke per second, adds more bait and more two-oar chords, and refills part of the Course meter as the crew bails water between waves. Your best wave is saved locally.
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