Use the power of your heart to reach the high score!

Intended to be used with an Arduino and a heartbeat sensor module: https://www.jaycar.com.au/heartbeat-sensor-module-for-arduino/p/XC3740

After connecting the sensor, click "open port" and select the Arduino.  It will take a few beats for the sensor to get a consistent reading, once it is updating steadily click the "START!" button to play the game.

Use the Q (up) and A (down) keys to move your ship and collect the hearts.  Hearts will spawn in time with your heartbeat, and will be bigger and score higher as your heartrate climbs.  Grab as many as you can before the timer runs out!

Dev Notes

I knew I wanted to make a heartbeat-powered game, but I went through a bunch of different ideas before settling on this one.

The first idea I spent some time on was for a kind of psychic battle simulator where heartrate spikes would count as attacks on a monster.  I gave up on this after finding the sensor just wasn't responsive enough to give a feeling of interactivity, but I did make a very silly concept video for it:

Created for Week 1 of the GAME A WEEK SYDNEY 2025 game jam