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Signal // noise
A twin-stick decoder I built to study readability, telegraphing, and tuning loops - the design fundamentals that make shooters feel good.
Core loop
Three pillars in one minute
Tune the band
Three frequencies, LOW, MID, HIGH. Match an enemy's band for 3× damage. Mistune and they barely flinch. The wheel, 1·2·3, or Q/E swaps bands instantly.
Hidden in the noise
Enemies are mostly invisible. They pulse on a rhythm, that's your read window. Learning to anticipate pulses replaces traditional aiming difficulty.
Chain the score
Killing same-band enemies in a row builds a multiplier up to ×6. One mistuned kill resets it. Risk-reward layered on top of the core loop.
Why this exists
A small game with a real opinion
I wanted a playable artifact that shows how I think about game systems, not just narrative claims about loving games. Signal // Noise is intentionally a shooter, but the frequency-tuning twist makes it about something more interesting than "I made an arena clone": telegraph design, sensory readability, risk-reward layering, and the quiet tuning numbers behind game feel.
The companion design doc walks through the loop, the tuning targets I picked, the metrics I'd instrument if this shipped, and the v2 roadmap.