How to Play In Falsus: Beginner Guide to Your First Hours

What you are actually doing

Every song is played on two levels at once. Below are six floor lanes: four in the middle and one on each side, each tied to a key. Above them is the Field, an aerial lane you steer with the mouse. There are four kinds of note:

Note	Where	What to do
Tap	Floor	Press the lane’s key.
Hold	Floor	Keep the key down until the note ends. There is no release timing, and you can re-press if you slip.
Field	Air	Keep the mouse cursor inside the purple area. If the cursor leaves it, the area turns red and briefly stops accepting input.
Flick	Air	Flick the mouse left for a yellow flick, right for a green one. The movement only has to cross the note, not cover its length.

On FBD charts, floor notes can be wide and span several lanes. Pressing any one of the covered keys is enough, so you never need all six keys down at once. There is no clicking at any point.

The default keys

The default layout is Left Shift, A, S, D, F, Space, left to right. The idea is that your left hand covers all six lanes while your right hand steers the mouse. Mouse buttons cannot be bound in the game. If that layout does not fit your hand or keyboard, rebind it before your first song; the controls guide has alternatives, including a right-handed setup.

Start on MIN

Each song has four charts:

MIN uses four lanes and your fingers can stay put. Levels 1 to 3.
EVO uses five lanes, and the three active middle lanes shift during the song. Levels 4 to 7.
ULT uses all six lanes. Levels 8 to 10.
FBD adds wide notes. Levels 10 to 12.

The jump from EVO to ULT is where most players stall. The difficulty guide lists the gentlest charts at each tier.

Scenario and Music Play

The Scenario is the story: a visual novel told from five characters’ points of view, broken into dated entries. Some entries end in an Encounter, a song where your cards fight an opponent. Reading entries is how most songs and Blueprints unlock; the story guide explains the structure.

Music Play is free play for songs you have unlocked. You can link a Remembrance to a song there, which turns the play into an Encounter with its own opponent and Iota drops. Without a Remembrance linked, you get no Iota.

Your first cards

Cards are crafted through Card Integration. You take a Blueprint, place Iota (pieces you win from Encounters) on its hex grid, and fill the coloured Zones. Every placement mistake is a penalty, and they are expensive: one penalty leaves the card at 89% of its stats, two at 56%, three at zero. Aim for a clean card over a big one. The Card Integration guide walks through it, and the cards page lists every known Blueprint.

Five things new players get wrong

Pressing every lane of a wide note. One key is enough.
Letting go of holds early out of habit. Holds have no release timing, so just keep the key down.
Losing the side lanes. Notes in the Shift and Space lanes are the most common complaint in Steam reviews. According to the Japanese community wiki’s patch notes, 1.0.2c added an option to highlight the side lanes.
Blaming yourself for missed chords on a laptop. Many laptop and membrane keyboards cannot register several keys at once. See known issues.
Playing the Scenario only for songs. It is also where Blueprints come from.

Where to go next

Song list and chart levels
Scoring and grades, with a calculator
Encounters if you want to understand the damage numbers

Sources: the Miraheze and wikiwiki community wikis’ gameplay pages, lowiro’s Steam page and patch announcements, and the Steam forum, all read on 10 September 2026.

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