For the game release on the 16th of August, both EternAlgoRhythm and its demo will have access to two new input modes; free and strict. But what are these anyway? To understand what these new input modes do, we need to first consider what the standard input mode does.

Standard Input Mode

When you don't tap any keys in your keyboard, the notes you see are automatically played by the game engine when they reach the judgement line. Furthermore, when you do tap keys, two things can happen:

• If the key tap is close to a note, the game will recognize that you want to tap this note and adjust the timing so that you hear the note at the time it's supposed to be played.
• If the key tap isn't close to a note, the game will say this is a free note, and play the corresponding sound.

This has some advantages and disadvantages;

• You get to hear the song as it's meant to be played in terms of timing, but you can still improvise whenever you want.
• When you miss a note and tap another key, you'll hear both the key you tapped (as a free note) and the one that you were supposed to tap; this often makes it easy to tell if you missed the note.
• It's harder to tell if you have the right timing when you press the correct note, though you can still know by the amount of particles the new particle system throws; the more, the better.

Free Input Mode

In free input mode, the game leaves all notes to you and doesn't automatically play any of the notes you're responsible for (it'll still play the other instruments, and any notes you're not playing if you reduce the number of keys to play). In other words, all notes are free. The advantages and disadvantages change;

• You get total freedom to improvise anything you want if you don't want to follow the notes.
• You can easily tell if you are missing the right timing because the notes you tap will sound too early or too late compared to the other instruments.
• It's harder to tell through sound cues if you're missing any notes when you tap a different key, since you'll only hear the note you tapped, though you'll be able to tell through the notes you see not being tapped.

Strict Mode

For completeness sake, there is also strict mode, where there are no free notes; only the notes you're supposed to tap are heard. If you don't like to improvise, and don't want to hear mistakes when you tap a different key from the one you're supposed to, this is the input mode for you.

Which mode should I play?

In a way Standard mode is a combination of Strict mode and Free mode, which will be suitable for most new players. If you're at the stage where you want to improve by tapping the right keys, Standard mode might work best for you. If you're at the stage where you want to improve by tapping the keys at the perfect moment, Free mode might help you the most.