elicoggins/keyboardwarrior

A rhythm typing game built in Rust.

Copying off the homework of the wonderful projects Clone Hero and YARG. Free, lightweight, and compatible with your existing chart library. Built-in bridge to Chorus Encore to download community charts.

Available on macOS, Windows and Linux, as well as a playable browser demo:

▶ Play in your browser

Keyboard Warrior puts a spin on Guitar Hero-like rhythm games by assigning a letter to each note, forming words. Type the corresponding letter in rhythm to hit the note. SPACE unleashes your star power and SHIFT is your whammy bar.

• ENTER — start the selected song
• SHIFT + ENTER — practice mode: pick a start and end section, loop it, and use LEFT / RIGHT to run it anywhere from 25% to 200% speed
• S — cycle how the library is sorted (title, collection, artist, album, decade, genre)
• Hold SPACE — jump between category sections
• O — options
• ESC — pause

Calibrate your latency the first time you play (C → calibration). Every display and audio setup has some delay, and the game can't judge your timing fairly until it knows yours.

If you change your setup (switch to headphones, etc) C to recalibrate takes seconds. Calibration uses fresh taps and keeps the same real delay at every practice speed. Practice sections and resume ticks follow the selected instrument and local tempo.

Grab the latest release below or check out the Releases page.

macOS will be annoying and refuse to open the app.

1. Download the binary and stick it in your Applications folder.
2. Double-click the app and macOS will block it. Click Done.
3. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the Security section, and click Open Anyway next to the message about Keyboard Warrior.
4. Confirm with Open Anyway and authenticate.

You only have to do this once - after that it launches normally.

Unzip the folder anywhere and run keyboardwarrior.exe. Keep the bundled_songs folder next to it - that's where the game looks for the bundled music.

Windows Defender SmartScreen will show a blue "Windows protected your PC" box. Click More info, then Run anyway. Once again, only the first time.

Note: If the game fails to recognize the bundled songs on first launch, it usually means you are running from inside the original ZIP. Extract first to fix.

Unpack anywhere and run ./keyboardwarrior. You'll need ALSA available (libasound2 on Debian/Ubuntu). Keep the bundled_songs folder next to the binary.

Keyboard Warrior ships with a built-in bridge to Chorus Encore - Search and download community charts from right inside the app.

It reads the same standardized file formats as other popular music rhythm games, which means there's also tons of resources online for sourcing charts yourself. Drop either format into your songs folder:

• a .sng file
• a song folder (notes.mid / notes.chart, song.ini, and audio stems as .opus / .ogg / .mp3 / .wav)

Your songs live outside the app, so replacing it with a newer build never touches your library:

Or point the app right at your existing library in O → Song Folders. The keyboard path prompt supports paste, caret editing, Shift selection, and Tab / Shift+Tab to cycle folder completions. Unicode paths are preserved; characters outside the game font display as [U+XXXX]. Multiple directories can be enabled together.

Chorus downloads continue when you leave search. A download completed on the search screen refreshes the library immediately and selects the new song; completion elsewhere refreshes when you return to the song menu.

Deleting a song from the menu takes two consecutive Delete / Backspace presses. The confirmation names permanent removal of the song file or folder; another action or leaving the menu cancels it. Bundled songs are protected. Cancelling the subsequent scan does not undo a completed deletion.

The songs that ship with the game are used under Creative Commons licenses, with thanks to the artists and to the charters who built the note charts.

Music by Jonathan Coulton and Brad Sucks. Charts sourced from Chorus Encore.

Free to download, play and share.

The full terms are in LICENSE.md, and the third-party open-source components the game is built on are listed in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. A copy of both ships inside the download.

This game is capable of two outbound network requests: The first checks for new versions of the game, and the second is the optional Chorus Encore search and download. Nothing else is sent or collected. Songs, scores, and settings are completely local and private.

Something broken? Open an issue — include the version from the options screen and, if it's a specific song, which one.

If the game crashed, there's a log worth attaching.

What changed between versions is in CHANGELOG.md.

• Rust — distills to single 12 MB binary
• macroquad — window, rendering and input
• cpal — drives custom mixer
• symphonia and libopus — stem decoding (opus, ogg/vorbis, mp3, wav, flac)
• midly — .mid chart parsing
• WebAssembly — web audio swap for WASM demo

Full dependency list and licenses: THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.

Keyboard Warrior is free to download, play and share at no cost. If you are looking for a way to support the developer, buy me a coffee on Ko-fi.

Your support is never expected but always appreciated.