Design Statement
The theme track has three parts: a held chord that barely breathes, a steady walking pulse, and a drop where the low notes fall away. I heard a human life in that shape.

In One Life, One Song, one second is one year. You are born as one dot on a small Earth, in a place set by real birth data. Childhood is the held breath, one slow chord at a time. At age twenty the pulse begins, played by the ensemble your childhood choices picked. In your last seconds the bass drops out and your own notes ring on top.

Every action is a note. Lights rise beside you: people, and the world. Catch a person and they join your accompaniment; when they leave your life, their part goes quiet. Catch the world's lights (a first job, a move abroad) and they become notes in your melody. At a fork, time stops, two answers rise, and the music holds one chord until you choose. Most forks have no wrong answer, but a few can end the life.

When the life ends, your notes are pressed into a record and played back. One life, one song.

Game Instructions (launch steps, controls, and gameplay overview)
How to start
- Browser: play it right on this page, and turn the sound on. Headphones help; the game is mostly music.
- Windows: download the ZIP, unzip it and run "One Life One Song.exe". The app isn't code-signed, so Windows may warn you before it opens. If it does, open the warning's details and choose "Run anyway", or just play in the browser.
- Languages: English, Korean, Spanish (switch on the title screen).

Controls
- Mouse or touch recommended: the buttons on the end screen need them. During a life, the left and right arrow keys also catch the light on that side.
- Click a light before its ring fades to catch it. That moment enters your life and plays a note.
- Click anywhere else to play a note of your own. The higher you click, the higher the note.
- At a fork the world pauses and asks a question. Click one of the two lights.

What happens
- On the opening black screen, click the single light, then click "Be born". After your first life, you can also choose where you're born.
- Click once more to begin the life. One second is one year; your first life runs a little slower (change it with Pace on the title screen).
- In early childhood your family catches lights for you. The game tells you when it's your turn.
- Some lights are people: family, friends, love, children. Others are the world: learning, work, travel, a new home.
- A whole life takes about three minutes. When it ends, your notes are pressed into a record and played back.
- Then be born as the same baby again, or as a new baby. If you had children, you can also be born as your own grandchild.

Gameplay walkthrough video
https://youtu.be/n4YVlsgL7cY

Did your project use any AI tools or assets? If yes, please specify.
This game contains AI-generated content.
- Code: written with AI coding assistants under my direction. I designed the systems, played each build and decided what stayed.
- Text: most in-game writing (life events, fork questions, the lines that come back years later, letters, short history notes) was drafted with AI from my design notes and story rules, then reviewed by me during playtesting, with additional AI checks. The English and Spanish versions were translated with AI from the Korean original.
- Ideas and review: I also used AI assistants to brainstorm and to critique drafts.
- Not AI: there is no AI-generated art, music or sound. The globe, lights and interface are drawn in code; the land shading comes from Natural Earth II (public domain); the record sleeves are public-domain paintings. The music is played live by the game's code from recorded instrument samples (tonejs-instruments, CC BY 3.0; FluidR3 GM, MIT).
This game includes authorized open-source materials.