If you're reading this...hello.
Also, you're probably here because you started the game, or you're trying to play the game. You might also be here because there's surprisingly little help for rookie players. Well, this is where I come in and provide what help I can based on my time playing the game.

Mostly fumbling around and hoping I can eventually play the songs right.

In this here guide, I want to touch on how to set your game up for ideal playing, introduce you to the songs you'll be playing, and give some possible tips on how to get better at the game.
If you're a more experienced player, you might be interested in the end part of the guide where I lay out how to go from Rookie to Medium.

First thing you want to do is set up your game environment for ideal rhythm gaming. Everyone has a different experience when playing these games so each ideal setting will be different for each person. Nonetheless, go through these settings and see if the settings are right for you.

I would highly recommend having this on to minimise distraction on the screen. Of course, this tip might not be as useful for multi-monitor setups, but it's the least that is possible.

This is a setting that's designed to limit the game's frame rate to reduce on screen tearing. Depending on how good your monitor is and how high the refresh rate is, turning it off might be ideal to get some more precise hits on those notes. Keep it on if you experience screen tearing - last thing you need in a rhythm game is the screen not coping.

Turn them off, I mean...
I guess to some extent, the additional noise in the background reduces the drift effect your eyes will get after staring at the highway for too long, but at the same time, that spinning background with stars everywhere is going to distract you. The background changing colour is more than enough.

This one will vary from player to player. Some people prefer miss sounds because it tells them that they missed and need to get their focus back on the screen. Others may not like it as it detracts from the background music and therefore becomes a distraction. It will have to depend on what you choose - I have them off to minimise distraction but it does become a bit awkward when a note quietly whizzes past.
I would, however, turn this on for FC runs to quickly point out a miss and reset.

This one varies from player to player, and even from song to song. Adjusting the speed the notes come at you can help either process what the note you should hit is or what sequence the notes should be, depending on your setting.

Using Fast
As counter-intuitive as it seems, Fast notes can actually be better for processing individual notes. The spacing becomes artificially wider so you can process the next note that comes up, but at the drawback that you have less time to react.

Using Slow
This would be the setting many people believe would be easier to play with. Having a slower note speed does mean the notes stay on screen longer and you have an idea on what to hit next, whether just the one note or even a sequence of notes. The drawback is that for some songs with lots of notes, the spacing becomes narrow and deceptively tricky.

This one may or may not be relevant depending on how you play. If you've set up your controls with a guitar peripheral such as Guitar Hero or Rock Band, hold your keyboard like a guitar peripheral, or just play with one hand, this setting may or may not matter for you. It just mirrors the note placement.

Sadly, unlike Guitar Hero, calibrating the game's input lag isn't as intuitive. Rather than separate audio and input calibrations, there's only one for when notes will arrive.
If you make the calibration a positive value, the notes will appear after the beat the note is intended for.
If you make the calibration a negative value, the notes will appear before the beat the note is intended for. A tip for some players: if you find you're striking notes too early - hitting the right note but it just whizzes past - slightly adjusting this number down may help with timing.

Each note is mapped to a key on your keyboard, obviously. Here, this will really determine how you play, especially if you plan to play with a keyboard like normal - so no pretending you're playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band. The difficulties you play will also vary how you may want to lay out your hand for gameplay. Your style of playing a song may also influence the way you set your buttons out.

All songs in Chiptune Champion only have one note per hit, so this means you're unlikely to be hitting two keys at once. This means playing with one hand is as viable of a strategy as playing with two hands - heck, you could even play with one finger. Should you play with one hand, it may be ideal to have your notes laid out 5 keys in a row.

However, if you plan to play with two hands, you may find yourself changing these settings frequently if you're going from Rookie to Medium. Let me give a few suggestions:

• Start out on Rookie with two keys per hand. I chose D and F for my left hand and J and K for my right hand. Perfectly balanced
  
• While I did not do this, if you plan to move onto Medium, change your layout for Rookie so that you have one hand playing 3 notes and another only playing one note. You may also want to try with using the space bar for one of the hands. Only do this if you plan to have a 3-2 layout in the next step.
  
• On Medium, either have one hand play 3 keys and the other 2 keys, or have your left control key 1 and 2, your thumbs on both hands on the space bar for 3, and right control key 4 and 5. This will take a lot of getting used to, so experiment with what layout works best for you.

I write this section out as if you only play with one mode at a time, but you can play both modes if that suits you.

This game offers two modes of play: Strum and Tap.

Strum mode plays like Guitar Hero and Rock Band where pressing the note key down won't input until you hit that strum button. Of course, Strum mode will still have Tap notes indicated by the note having a white dot, these still need precision timing to hit instead of the safety net offered by Strum Mode preventing incorrect inputs until you commit.
This game mode is perfect for those with a setup akin to playing those classic rhythm games, though might not be so easy for players using a keyboard in front of themselves.

Tap mode changes every key to a Tap note, so it plays more like DDR where pressing the input is the commitment. Nothing really more to it from Strum mode.
If you're not playing like you have a plastic guitar, I recommend playing this mode, especially as you go into higher difficulties where already having 5 keys is confusing enough. It does, however, mean if you tap any key and it isn't a note, it will always count as a miss - this game does not have ghost inputs.

So, before I delve into how playing each song goes for someone going from Rookie to Medium, I'll lay out some terms being used to describe each sequence, pulled from a Guitar Hero dictionary (apologies for any inaccuracies).

This is when you complete a song without missing a single note. A difficult feat, but no matter how unceremonious the end screen is, it's still a relief to see that 100%.

This is when a sequence of notes is of the one colour in rapid succession. Rather than just being a string of notes, they can appear packed together, requiring rapid finger tapping. These can appear in groups of 2-4 (111 11 1111).

This is when a sequence of notes may follow either 121212 or 122112. Can be a fun little finger exercise, or an exercise of patience.

A general term I've made. This is when notes follow an ascending or descending order. These can range from a Triplet (123 123), Quadruplet (1234 1234), or Quintuplet (12345 12345), and includes Zigzags or Chimneys (12321, etc.).

I made this one up, they're like a Ladder but not within the same span of 5 notes. This is to explain confusing crosses of notes within 3 notes (132) or 4 notes (1423). These aren't inherently confusing but in instances where both hands may be involved, it can get a bit hard to grasp especially if a song is too fast.

So, you've set your game up, chose your mode, and now you don't know where to start. There's no intensity rating, difficulty rating, or a time. All you can see is the name and artist, and a scoreboard. You're basically in the deep end at this point and you don't know which song to start with.

To help, here's a list of songs in the base game (excluding bonuses from achievements), sorted from shortest to longest time. The length of a song can be helpful for you to decide which song might be good to, say, FC or get a high score from, or just to measure out what would be a good but quick song to practice on as you try ease into the game.

The length of a song does not inherently dictate the difficulty of a song. Many of the shorter songs I find are quite confusing and have been banes of me trying to get FCs. Longer songs aren't harder, but require more concentration and fatigue can be the biggest downfall.

Drawing from my own experience starting, restarting, and upping the difficulty, there's a few things I did learn about the game. These aren't miracle tips by any mean in terms of immediate improvement, but they are still something to think about. This may be added to the more I think about possible improvements.

It's very tempting for you to press the right key after the wrong one as a "wait I meant this" move, but this will hurt not just your score, but your meter down the bottom, your "health" as you might see it. Every time you make a wrong move, that goes down, so if you make a wrong move, miss, and try to correct after the fact, that's 3 incorrect moves.

This is predicated by the first tip, but if you see a pattern you're unfamiliar with hitting yet, aim to hit only hit one or two colours, depending on the pattern. Say you have a sequence of Triplet patterns, you might only want to hit just one or two colours on that pattern if you can't process quickly enough. Won't do good for your score anyway, but it's better than hurting your "health" bar.

Don't try to mash the keys back into rhythm, you'll make more mistakes than you need. Instead, pick a note in processing range and continue from that note. It's much easier to get back into the rhythm if your fingers get a quick breather.

You are going to be hitting that Exit To Menu button more times than you think. Use this to your advantage to get a better game play scheme for you.

If you're playing a song where the hold notes are confusing you (these are the notes that have a tail behind them), aim for just tapping them. The point of these notes is that the longer you hold them, the more points you'll get, but if points aren't your goal and you have no choice, tap them to clear the screen space.

A song might suck to play at first. However, if you replay the song - later or right after you finished - you'll find yourself getting better just because you're familiar with the song itself. It is a rhythm game, after all.
Of course, this might stop applying as you get higher scores if you accidentally fumble a song, or get an FC.

I mean, it's your first attempt, why try to perfect what you don't know yet? Unless you're an extreme pro at rhythm games, save yourself the stress and let yourself make as many mistakes the game will allow you.

Know what finger situates where, and stop at that. Sometimes, you may find yourself hitting a sequence of notes and it'll be tempting to disrupt yourself and think "how am I hitting this?". Just go with the flow and keep at it until you hit a mental break where you can think to yourself. You may even find yourself hitting a sequence without actually thinking too much into it, try it out.

You're going to finish a song, and then notice the screen is moving. This is because your eyes have become adjusted to the scrolling of the highway and so that sudden stop in movement means your vision is still following that. Stop and take a break, maybe also breathe and relax yourself.

Once you've played enough Rookie and you feel like you're getting better at this, maybe you'll want to hit that Medium button and shirk off the amateur title of Rookie player.

Then you start playing and the learning curve becomes a cliff. Another button? Faster? More keys? Huh???

Suddenly, Rookie is tantalising again.

I've done this loop before, what you need is a low intensity song to start the journey into high difficulties for real. In this table is a list of every song in the base game and my experience playing them on Medium after being Rookie long enough. Note that the Intensity is my general feeling towards how the song plays and may be different for each player.

Disclaimer: This table is for people going from Rookie to Medium, but it can be a little useful in gauging intensity in all difficulties.


Continued in Part 2.

Part 2 because guides have word limits per section, I guess.

As a quick aside in this guide, I decided to see if I could possibly write anything about going from Medium to Expert mode. Suffice to say, this is a very interesting note.

First of all: you still have your 5 keys, so going from Medium to Expert in terms of control scheme is really no different.

Secondly: In terms of what Expert offers differently, basically all it will do is throw in more notes and in smaller frames of time. Where you might go into a song that had a sequence of notes in a single hold note might end up becoming a Trill, a Triplet, or a Jack. This will need a lot more finger dexterity, so make sure you know how you go in Medium before attempting to jump up.

In my opinion, the jump between these two difficulties isn't nearly as noteworthy as Rookie to Medium. If you feel you're ready to make that final stride into mastering the game, all I will say is I wish you luck.

Just watch out for all those very quick sequences of Triplets, Quadruplets, and Quintuplets.

So, that's about everything I can offer.

It does look impossible to pick up the game what with how quickly it throws you into the fray, but trust me, with enough proper practice and patience with the game, it is possible to get better. I've managed a few FCs at this point and I still don't consider myself too good yet.

All-in-all, just give it a good shot, you might get somewhere with the game.