LoomRiftTala

Thwack. A saffron row slides up to the gold beater, you swipe from the left, and the shuttle flies through the warp right on the beat. The row packs in tight. Another rises. Madder red this time, so you swipe from the right. LoomRiftTala is a rhythm game played on a royal hand loom. The side you swipe from picks the dye: left spool or right spool. Throw on the beat and the row is beaten in thin and neat. Throw a touch late and it sits looser. Miss it and the cloth keeps a frayed gap, because the loom remembers everything. Then come the rifts. Partway through a bolt the spools swap sides, or one is suddenly re-dyed raw silk, and the hand that knew the pattern has to listen again. Tala rests ask you to hold still. Half-beat syncopation and tempo shifts arrive in the later bolts. There are 40 pattern bolts pinned on a merchant's cloth rack, from simple stripes to dense master patterns,…