Boléresque

Solve the puzzle by rearranging the score of Maurice Ravel's Boléro.

Native Windows and Linux builds coming soon!

Boléresque was created in one month for Games For Blind Gamers 4. Please rate the game and provide feedback!

The game outputs text-to-speech using your device's screen reader, if one is detected. You can adjust or disable text-to-speech in the game's Options screen. Please see the Known Issues below.

How to Play

You are given a grid of tiles, where each tile is a small piece of music. Your goal is to rearrange the tiles to recreate the beginning of Ravel's Boléro.

There are four tools you can use to manipulate the selected tile:

1. Listen: Hear the tile's music. (This is mostly for people playing with a mouse or touchscreen. If you are using a keyboard or gamepad, you may find it more convenient to use the dedicated shortcuts listed below.)
2. Move: Swap the tile with its neighbor to the left or right. To use this tool, first activate the tool, then press left or right.
3. X Mirror: Reverse the order of the tile's notes, so the first note is played last, etc.
4. Y Mirror: Invert the pitches of the tile's notes, so low notes become high notes, etc.

The puzzle grid has two sections (rows): the melody played on piano, and the accompaniment played on cello. There is also a background snare drum part, which you don't need to rearrange. If you find it too challenging to listen to all instruments at the same time, you can adjust each part's volume level in the options.

There are various ways to hear all or part of the puzzle in its current state, and to hear the solution to learn what the music should sound like. Once you think they match, navigate to the Check Solution button in the bottom right to find out if you are correct.

There is currently only one puzzle, but it is randomized to provide some replay value. In the future I hope to add more puzzles with different solutions, sizes, and complexities, as well as a daily puzzle mode.

Controls

The game can be played with a keyboard, a gamepad, or (if you are sighted) a mouse or touchscreen.

Action	Keyboard	Gamepad
Navigate UI and puzzle	Arrow keys, Tab	D-pad or left joystick
Switch tool	Number row 1-4	L/R shoulder buttons
Use tool on tile	Space, Enter	A. (bottom face button)
Hear puzzle tile (press and release)	Shift	X (left face button)
Hear full solution	Shift + Left	X + Left
Hear solution column	Shift + Up	X + Up
Hear puzzle section	Shift + Right	X + Right
Hear puzzle column	Shift + Down	X + Down
Hear full puzzle	Shift + Space	X + Space
Toggle listen mode (see below)	Backspace or L	(No binding)
Pause menu	Esc	Start

If you have difficulty pressing multiple keys at the same time, you can press Backspace or L to enter listen mode, which is equivalent to holding down Shift. Once you are in listen mode, press the up, down, left, right, Shift, or Space key to perform the actions described above. Listen mode automatically ends after you perform the action, or if you press Backspace or L again.

Known Issues

• When playing in the browser, the game may warn you that TTS is not available even though it actually is. This happens if the voices list takes a very long time to load. It may fix itself by reloading the page.
• On Linux, TTS may not work in Chrome-based browsers. Try Firefox or download the native executable instead.
• On Windows, TTS can only use Microsoft Narrator voices, even if you are using a different screen reader such as JAWS or NVDA. This is a game engine limitation which I cannot do anything about.
• When playing in the browser, the music may be choppy, clicky, or out of tempo. I did not have time to fix this for the jam. Consider downloading the native executable instead.
• The game might forget your settings between sessions. This will be fixed soon.