How to play
- Goal
- Strike the glowing runes as they reach the anvil, in time with the song, to forge the blade.
- How it ends
- The song ends with the quench and your blade is graded from Crude to Legendary; miss too often and the blade cools and cracks, and the forging is lost.
- Record
- The best score of each blade, with a top ten.
- Strike the horn, face and heel with J K L (or A S D, or the arrow keys ← ↓ →) as each rune reaches the ring on the anvil. On a phone tap the left, middle or right of the anvil.
- True strikes land within 40 ms, Clean within 80, Glancing within 125. A rune with a glowing tail is a roll: strike it and keep holding to its end.
- Unbroken strikes build heat (×2, ×3, ×4). Misses and strikes where no rune is cool the blade; if the temper runs out it cracks. Forging a blade opens the next. If strikes feel late or early, set the timing offset in Settings (the tap test measures it).
Controls
| J K L · A S D · ← ↓ → | Strike the horn, face and heel |
|---|---|
| Hold | Keep a roll going to the end of its tail |
| Tap | On a touch screen: the left, middle or right of the anvil |
| P · Escape | Pause (a forging paused in its song counts for your own best only) |
| R · ↻ | Restart the blade |
The twelve songs were composed in code for this game in the Morass music-maker and rendered from orchestral and folk sample libraries; each song's chart is written in the same file as its music. The anvil you hear is a real recorded anvil (VCSL, CC0); the forges, the anvil, the hammer, the blades and the runes are painted art from the Morass warehouse, some of it made for this game. Timing runs on the song's own clock, so a dropped frame never moves a rune; a run is just the presses you made, and the records worker replays each one before it enters a Top 10. Your bests stay in this browser under morass.anvil-song.v1. A smithy's song is fetched when you open one of its blades. Wired headphones or speakers keep the timing truest. A gamepad works when one is connected. No ads or analytics run inside the game.
Watch how to play
About Anvil Song
Every smithy has its own song, and the song is missing its anvil: that is you. Runes slide down three lanes onto the anvil's horn, face and heel, and each strike you land in time rings out with the band, throws sparks and heats the blade lying on the anvil a little more. The last strike of the song is the quench: a hiss of steam, and the finished blade with its grade, from Crude to Legendary.
The twelve songs were composed for this game, from a homely village forge in F major to a dwarven work song, a market-day dance in six-eight, a clockwork foundry, an elven waltz under the moon, a giant's slow stomp, a drake's breath in seven, and the Everforge at the end. The anvil's part was written with each song by the same hand, so the strikes are a voice the music leaves room for.
Each song has five blades, nested like the parts of one arrangement: the Dagger plays only the strong beats; the Arming Sword every beat; the Falchion the tune's rhythm and the first held rolls; the Longsword off-beats and answers; the Runeblade everything the anvil does, two runes at once included. A run of true strikes builds heat, up to four times the points; misses and strikes on empty lanes cool the blade, and if the temper runs out it cracks. Every blade has a top ten, proved by replaying the run.
