Pulse Lock
One button. Hit the lock the instant the pointer crosses it.
How to Play Pulse Lock
- Watch the pointer sweep around the ring toward a lit lock.
- Tap at the moment it crosses. A dead-centre hit pays more than a clipped edge.
- Hatched locks are guards — tapping one costs you charge. Let them pass.
Controls
| Keyboard | Any key to strike |
|---|---|
| Touch | Tap anywhere to strike |
Tips
- Read the ruler under the ring. If your marks pile up on one side you are always early or always late, and that is fixable.
About Pulse Lock
A pointer sweeps around a ring. Tap the moment it crosses a lit lock — dead centre pays most, and the hatched guards must be left alone. It runs directly in your browser with no download or sign-up, on desktop and mobile alike.
Design notes: how Pulse Lock was built
Tap timing is corrected for the gap between the event and the frame. A pointer or key event carries a timestamp that is usually a few milliseconds older than the last rendered frame, so judging against the last drawn needle angle systematically reads every tap as slightly early — up to 0.034 radians at 60Hz, which at high spin speeds is the difference between a perfect hit and a miss. The game re-advances the needle to the event’s actual timestamp before judging it.
The needle angle is never wrapped to the range −π to π. Letting it grow without bound means “has the needle passed this segment” is one subtraction instead of a pile of wrap-around cases, and wrap-around cases in angle maths are where timing games hide their worst bugs.
Guard segments — the ones you must not hit — are marked with hatching and an X as well as colour. That is a direct correction of an earlier game on this site that encoded the same distinction in hue alone and was unreadable for anyone with a colour vision deficiency. The idle death is also engineered rather than timed: an untouched run bleeds its charge to zero in about seven seconds through the ordinary cost schedule, so the automated gate sees a game that ends when abandoned without the game ever having to count down at the player.
More of these in the dev notes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Pulse Lock decide a hit is perfect?
By how close to the centre of the lock you tapped. Three tiers pay different scores and restore different amounts of charge.
Why did tapping that lock cost me charge?
It was a guard — drawn hatched with an X across it. Guards are there to be left alone, and skipping one scores.
Does it play the same on a 120Hz phone?
Yes. The sweep and the hit window are measured in real time, not in frames.
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