Signal Path
Write a beat. It controls your car.
Signal Path is a musical road trip game for iPhone and iPad. Every stop is a short puzzle: write a one-bar loop, press play, and the beat drives your car down the road. The kick jumps, the snare clears the way, and the bass lays a bridge. Get the rhythm right and you make it through, with a song you wrote playing the whole way.
A Road Trip You Score Yourself
The trip runs from the maple hills of New England through Tennessee, Atlanta and New Orleans, up Highway 61 to Detroit and Chicago, then over the Rockies and across the desert to the Pacific. Ten regions and fifty stops, from Bristol to Beale Street to the Santa Monica Pier.
The band changes with the map. Synthwave in New England and the desert, country in Tennessee, hip-hop in Atlanta, jazz in New Orleans, blues in the Delta, Motown in Detroit, house in Chicago, folk in the Rockies and surf on the coast. Your loop works the same way everywhere. Only the instruments and the feel change.
How it plays
- Write one bar. Kick, Snare and Bass move the car. Hats, Lead and Pad cost nothing and never touch the road: they are there to make the song yours.
- Read the road. Washed-out bridges, leaf piles, railroad trestles, flooded streets, cactus and waves. Each one asks something different of your rhythm.
- Earn three stars. Finish the stop, reach par with the fewest notes, and collect every spark. Par and sparks often need different loops.
- Take the Scenic Drive. Finish a region’s five stops and drive the whole region with your five songs as the soundtrack.
- Fill the garage and the album. Eight vehicles, six of them earned along the way, and a postcard for every stop you finish.
- Start gently. The first stop, Maple Lane, is a hands-on tutorial, and you can replay it any time.
The fine print. Briefly.
Built by Chris Weiss. Every note is played live on your device by the game’s own synthesized bands: no recordings, no downloads, and no internet connection needed. Free, with no accounts, no ads, and no analytics. Your songs and progress stay on your iPhone or iPad. Headphones recommended.
The Book Behind the App
Built by Chris Weiss, who is also writing The Last Bites.
Drive across the country and the music changes every few hundred miles. So does dinner. The road that gives you the blues also gives you hot tamales, and the city where house music got its name runs on Italian beef.
The Last Bites is about what a dish says about the person who makes it, and the person who asks for it. A man on death row requests his last meal, and the dish he names is one chef’s own. Signal Path takes the same idea on the road: every region has a sound, and every sound comes with a plate.
The menu along the route
- New England: synthwave and cider donuts under the maples.
- Tennessee: country and Nashville hot chicken.
- Atlanta: hip-hop and lemon pepper wings.
- New Orleans: jazz and a bowl of gumbo.
- Mississippi Delta: the blues and hot tamales.
- Detroit: Motown and a Coney dog.
- Chicago: house and Italian beef.
- Rocky Mountains: folk and trout over a campfire.
- Desert Southwest: synthwave and green chile.
- Southern California: surf and fish tacos.
Read the first three chapters before the next rest stop.
Support
Questions, feedback, or something not working? Email chris@insearchofacity.com.
If something goes wrong, open Settings in the game and tap Copy report. It copies the app version, your device and any recent errors, ready to paste into the email. Nothing is sent unless you send it.