Open-source electronic-drum learning meets a rhythm-game highway, progressive lessons, and deterministic timing.
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HitTheKit is an open-source rhythm game for electronic drum kits. It helps beginners understand what to hit and when through clear visual cues and short, rewarding practice sessions instead of requiring traditional music notation. The playable Unity vertical slice is backed by an engine-independent, automatically tested hit-matching core.
| Play | Learn | Configure |
|---|---|---|
| Follow a perspective drum highway with timing judgments, results and three original visual environments. | Build coordination through 12 playable beginner lessons with study speeds and mastery goals. | Discover and map an electronic kit through guided hits, review and sound-check flows. |
| Keyboard on desktop; CoreMIDI electronic drums on macOS Apple Silicon. | A second semester remains visible as a roadmap rather than simulated assessment. | Deterministic simulation remains available when no supported MIDI backend is present. |
The same gameplay session powers Play and Learn. Charts, the DSP song clock, hit matching and MIDI input are shared rather than reimplemented per mode.
These are real captures of the current Unity application running the original, rights-clean demo content—not promotional mockups.
Watch the 42-second gameplay tour →
The tour moves from the main menu through kit setup and lesson selection into real gameplay. Its soundtrack is an original, rights-clean instrumental created for HitTheKit.
| Main menu | Concert Stage gameplay |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Choose Play, Learn or configure an electronic drum kit. | Follow the perspective highway using a keyboard or a supported CoreMIDI kit. |
Important
HitTheKit is an active pre-release project. Signed and notarized Apple-silicon beta builds, when available, are published only through the official GitHub prereleases. They are tester-facing candidates rather than stable releases. Historical private builds and private development history remain excluded.
| Capability | Current status |
|---|---|
| Keyboard gameplay | macOS, Windows and Linux |
| Electronic-drum MIDI | macOS Apple Silicon through CoreMIDI |
| Learning path | 12 playable lessons; 12 more planned |
| Included music | Original rights-clean demo only |
| Public binary | macOS Apple-silicon beta only; see GitHub Releases |
Current limitations and release gates are tracked in SUPPORT.md and the public-release checklist.
Requirements: the .NET SDK selected by global.json and Unity
6000.5.6f1 for the game client.
dotnet test HitTheKit.sln
./scripts/sync-core-to-unity.shThen open src/HitTheKit.Unity in Unity Hub. On macOS Apple Silicon, build the
optional CoreMIDI plug-in before testing a real electronic kit:
./scripts/build-coremidi-plugin-macos-arm64.shThe generated Unity core DLL and native plug-in are intentionally ignored by Git. See the development guides for platform-specific setup, tests and clean-build expectations.
src/HitTheKit.Core/ deterministic timing and hit matching
src/HitTheKit.MidiTool/ offline MIDI inspection tooling
src/HitTheKit.Unity/ Unity gameplay, learning and device setup
native/ macOS CoreMIDI C ABI plug-in
website/ dependency-free public website
docs/ architecture, design, development and release guides
The core targets netstandard2.1 and remains independent of Unity. Unity owns
presentation and composition; native MIDI adapters feed the same normalized
input boundary used by keyboard and simulated sources. Start with the
architecture map.
The public Wiki is the
beginner-friendly handbook for building, configuring and using HitTheKit. Its
pages are generated from versioned sources under docs/wiki/.
The versioned documentation hub remains the source of truth for deeper technical documentation. It organizes:
- architecture and domain boundaries;
- gameplay, learning and device-setup design;
- MIDI, CoreMIDI and hardware validation;
- development, tests and packaging;
- release, legal and governance material.
Keeping both documentation layers beside the code makes changes reviewable and prevents the rendered Wiki from becoming stale.
- Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.
- Use GitHub Discussions for ideas and questions.
- Report reproducible problems through the issue templates.
- See SECURITY.md for private vulnerability reporting.
- See SUPPORT.md for supported environments and diagnostics.
Substantial external code contributions are temporarily paused while the project completes legal review of its contribution and licensing model.
Keeping an open electronic-drum game healthy requires hardware testing, accessibility and localization work, release validation, documentation and original rights-clean assets—not only feature development.
Sponsorship helps fund:
- testing across drum modules, MIDI devices, audio interfaces and clean machines;
- beginner-friendly learning content and accessibility improvements;
- original visual/audio assets and public documentation; and
- focused maintenance of the open-source core and contributor support.
Sponsorship does not buy roadmap control, commercial-song rights, private product access or a commercial HitTheKit license.
Prefer to help without spending money? Test a source build, report a sanitized
hardware result, improve documentation or pick a
good first issue.
Original project code is licensed under MPL-2.0. A separate commercial-license path remains available only through a written agreement; see LICENSING.md. Existing copies previously received under GPL-3.0-only retain those rights.
The public repository does not include commercial songs, recordings, charts, lyrics or artwork. Third-party names describe compatibility only. HitTheKit is not sponsored, endorsed or certified by Unity Technologies, Apple Inc. or any referenced hardware manufacturer. See NOTICE, TRADEMARKS.md, THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md and asset provenance.