INTRODUCTION
TRIPLETAP
A music rhythm color game
Tripletap is a free-to-play color music rhythm game: colors fall down three lanes, and you match them by shifting colors over in three taps or less. I designed, drew and coded it solo at JOYHYPE. It’s built on the Tower of Hanoi, but the puzzle stays invisible, and I built the controls, scoring and tutorial around its one rule.
- WHAT
An iOS rhythm arcade game: pick up a color, shift across three lanes and fire on the beat. Designed, illustrated and programmed solo in C#.
- ROLE
Creator, JOYHYPE (solo game design, art, animation, UI and C# gameplay programming)
About 5 min read
- SCOPE
Game Design, Art, Animation, UI, Motion, Gameplay Programming
青、ピンク、黄色の三色だけで遊べるのに、音に乗るとついもう一回やりたくなる。
Tapping Play transitions from the menu hub into carried-color lane shots, triggers flow-cascade level-ups on beat clears, and settles on the end-score and Keep Playing recovery cards.
The problem: moving could break your combo
The Tower of Hanoi moves plates between three pegs. Tripletap borrows that principle and hides it: you always hold one color, and tapping into another lane fires it before you pick up the next. To get from blue on the left to pink on the right, you pass through yellow in the middle.
In early builds, I used a standard arcade combo counter. That was a mistake. A streak could break while you were just crossing the middle lane to set up your real shot. The scoring system was punishing the core movement rule.
色彩
昔ながらのパズルを、色と音で遊び直してみたくなった。
My role
Tripletap is entirely mine. It began as a much smaller game for my university thesis. Later, living in Tokyo, I kept seeing people play gacha games and one rhythm drumming game, and it clicked: colors, rainbows, Guitar Hero lanes and Dance Dance Revolution, but for your fingers.
For the remaster I designed the mechanics, drew the characters and UI in Figma, animated the state transitions and wrote the C# gameplay code.
Japan, 2019: sketching the mascot cards, then playing an early Tripletap build on iPhone. Filmed by Julian Marshall.
Chunk the movement mechanic into memory
The easy fix was a regular tap-to-shoot game. I kept the carry-over rule because planning your route across three lanes is the fun, so my job was making that rule easy to chunk into memory.
If crossing yellow is part of reaching pink, that middle shot shouldn’t feel like an accident. I needed the controls to telegraph what was in your hand, and the scoring to reward the whole trip across the board.
青 桃色 黄色
三色しかないのに、次にどれを動かすかで指がちょっと忙しくなる。
1. Show what the next tap will fire
In playtests, players struggled to see which color they held and what the next tap would fire. I updated the lane button to show your carried color and added a matching glow ring around valid targets in the lanes ahead. Before your thumb lands, you can see what will fire.
2. Reward clears across lanes
I threw out the combo counter and built sweeps instead. Clear blocks across all three lanes within a few beats and you trigger a sweep bonus; land your taps on the beat and the multiplier climbs.
Suddenly the middle lane wasn’t an obstacle anymore. It was part of a three-lane setup.
I dropped single-shot combo streaks for cross-lane sweeps so the score rewarded the route across the board instead of punishing the setup move.
Tripletap in the build
3. Teach the move on screen
This was the biggest struggle. In over-the-shoulder playtests, people dropped in blind took ages to realize that tapping into a lane pulls the projectile over. So I built a tutorial to get everyone to that aha moment.
It holds your hand. Right after the first-launch reward, a mascot falls down one lane, one prompt says tap here to grab the color you need, and the next says tap here to release it. Repeat that a couple of times and the move sticks. Then you can really go tap, tap, tap, hence the name. With the tutorial in, my mom figured out how to play; power users who already read the color patterns just Dance Dance Revolution with their fingers.
I also baked in a safeguard. If you rushed the tutorial, or passed it and keep failing in real play, the game notices and offers the tutorial again so you can relearn the move.
The 2026 front end
Make the game move with the music
In a rhythm game, the board has to feel like an instrument. I wrote the C# beat clock so drops, clears and flow cascades lock to the tempo, and keyframed the menus and reward ceremonies so cards spring into place.
A run from first tap to game over
A good arcade loop builds tension until the board overwhelms you: misses flash the lane red as your shield takes the hit, and losing the last shield closes the run.
A simple game about colors
Read the board as it fills
Matching colors clear blocks and misses hit the shield, so a clean clear and a late miss both read at a glance.
Pick up and go
I love arcade games you understand in seconds. Tap, miss, try again, one more run.
東京の街で出会ったガチャやゲームセンター。その色彩と遊び心が、Tripletapの色合わせの着想になった。
Recorded in the build
The result: a finished iPhone game
I built the carried-color controls, sweeps and beat-driven feedback into a finished iPhone game.
Nothing here is mocked up: scripted bot sessions drive the gameplay recordings, so each mechanic plays exactly as built.
The remaster is finished. Next come more free-to-play missions, costumes, chests, and meta layers for your pet and rank.
If I started over, I’d be more intentional with scope and settle the mechanic first, then design for depth and longevity.
Launching on the App Store soon.
Special thanks
To Christiaan Kokott, my university roommate, who helped with the first small version and is now a senior ML engineer at Maya. And to Mark Denardo of Adult Swim (Robot Unicorn Attack). On my university thesis version, Mark worked on the soundtrack and pushed me to add a combo mode. Mark and I started a concept called Puzzle Pussycat back in 2015 that I never finished.
感謝
一人で作っているつもりでも、振り返ると助けてくれた人の顔がたくさん浮かぶ。
ARIGATO GOZAIMASU
ABOUT
I’m Matt Stenquist, a Product Design Engineer and former professional snowboarder. I started coding at nine, shipped modded hardware and games by 16, and turned pro by 22. A few broken bones and a gold tooth later, I design and code consumer apps, Figma component systems, and AI developer tools from scratch.
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