Beat the Beat

Beat the Beat is a roguelike deckbuilder where every click costs you 1 health (or more!). There are no turns or enemies, only the fleeting nature of your heartbeat and its fragile existence. Can you make it to 500 clicks before your heart gives out?

How to Play:

At the bottom of the screen, you have a hand of up to 5 cards, with the draw pile on the left and the discard pile on the right. Above the draw pile is the Draw button; click it to draw a card. The number on it is how many Draws you have available. If you're out, drawing a card will cost you 10 additional health. Many cards will give you Draws so you can (hopefully) avoid this. To the right of the Draw button is the Mana button. You can click it to gain 1 Mana at the cost of 2 health (plus the 1 health from clicking). Most cards cost Mana to play, indicated by the number (or symbol) in the top left of the card.

Some cards can be powered up (or down) with Aether. If you see the  symbol on a card, that's a number equal to the number of times you've pressed the Aether button (which is the big triangle) while that card is in your hand, which resets when the card is discarded.

If you click a card in the Shop, and you have enough money to afford it, it'll be added to your draw pile. The Shop will cycle to the next card every 5 clicks, so get your cards  while they're hot!

When your health hits 0 (or less), you lose. Currently, the only way to restart is to close and reopen the game. If you manage to click things 500 times, you win!

Every 75 clicks, something bad will happen. You'll always be told what's coming up next. At 150 and 425, the health cost of each click will go up by 1. The rest are in any order, as follows:
- Famine: reduce your Draws, Mana, money, and Aether on all cards to 1
- Wall: trash your hand and replace it with 5 Dud cards (costs 2 and trashes itself)
- Destruction: trash a random half of your draw or discard pile, whichever is bigger
- Locks: lock card slots 3, 4, and 5, making cards in them unable to be played. They can be unlocked for 5 Mana
- The Safe: lock card slot 1, making the card there unable to be played or seen. It can be unlocked for 30 money
- Fluff: adds a copy of the starter deck your draw pile
- Hubris: lose health equal to the sum of your Draws and Mana. This is a little more likely to show up, but it can never be the first event in a run

Symbols:

Cards in this game use a variety of symbols to communicate their effects. I'll implement a way to explain them in game later, but for now, here's a list of what each symbol means:

 Heal by a specified amount
Lose health
 Gain Draws
 Gain Mana
 Aether. This is a number equal to how many times you've pressed the Aether button while this card was in your hand
 Gain money, or if used as a number, it's equal to how much money you have
 Add Dud cards into your draw pile. These cost 2 Mana and trash themselves when played
 The card immediately to the left of this one
 The card immediately to the right of this one
 The card in slot 1
 The card in slot 5 (if it exists)
 Trash (permanently delete) a card. If it doesn't specify another card, it trashes itself
 Copy the effect or cost of another card. If it's copying a cost and there's no card to copy, it defaults to 3
 Discard a card
Cause and effect. If the condition on the left is satisfied, then the effect on the right happens.

So, for example, this card means you heal for 9 and gain 4 draws: 

Here are some examples of more complicated (and perhaps less intuitive) card effects:

Costs Aether. Gain 1 Dud into your draw pile. Gain 2 Mana. Gain 3 money. Gain 4 Draws: 

If this card is in slot 1, gain 3 Mana. If this card is in slot 5, gain 9 money: 

When this is played or discarded, heal 9 health (discarding it because your hand is too big does NOT count): 

Discard the cards in slots 5, 4, and 3. Gain 2 Mana: 

This costs however much the card immediately to the right costs (if there is none, it costs 3). Gain Draws equal to however much Aether you've put on this card (sorry it's so big lmao that's not a thing in game): 

I originally started this game for GMTK game jam 2026 (the theme is "countdown"), but I didn't have the time to finish it and I want to stick with it for longer than that anyways.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Game balance is something I'm still tuning, and I'm still working on a lot of different things. Tell me how far you can get!