Heartbeat by Shess
"Everything is falling apart, you need to keep track of so many issues at once, and just as you think it's stabilizing somewhat, you're hit with another emergency. We've all been there. Such is life".

Story: you are returning home. Your ship is barely holding together, and frankly, so are you. One by one, life support, defense and navigation functions are going out of order, needing your immediate (and repeated) attention.
But you can do this if you keep a cool head and solve every problem as it arises. Pump your heart. Replenish the oxygen levels. Depressurize. Adjust the course. Shoot at asteroids. And, when it's finally time to land, give it you all and hold that red button until the end.
- Keep your heartbeat steady every 10 seconds
- Multitask as more systems go out of order
- Prioritize crucial actions when in a pinch
- Hold tight until it's finally time to land
- Play in browser!
Controls: mouse and keyboard. You will need to press [SPACE] every 10 seconds to steady your heart. As other ship systems start failing, pressing [1][2][3] and holding [SHIFT][CTRL][ALT] will become necessary, too.
Use your MOUSE to spin the pressure valve in circular motions, pump the oxygen (up and down), wipe your windshields (left and right), and apply some precise clicks on switches, asteroids, and cracks. Don't worry, you won't need to do it all at the same time... at least not from the very beginning?

Code: Yanrishatum. Gamedesign, story, art: Shess. Art: bublick. Music, SFX: Elvendan.
| in-browser (self) | https://yanri.cc/games/heartbeat |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/heartbeat-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 60th | 4.158⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 173th | 3.895⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 42th | 4.184⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 55th | 4.316⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 250th | 4.105⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 43th | 4.237⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 15th | 4.526⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 13🗨️ |
But this is incredible!
That said, the keyboard bindings could use some improvement. Since the game is running in browser Alt and Ctrl are dangerous buttons due to the browser's own shortcuts. For example, in my Chrome Alt moves focus to the browser settings and Ctrl+1/2/3 switches tabs. I had to be really careful not to press too many buttons at once and after pressing Alt I always had to bring focus back to the game with a mouse click. Needless to say, in such a stressful game this added some unnecessary frustration. :sweat_smile:
Also, I had very little time to read the text prompts after all of the ship's "features" came online. My eyes were too busy scanning the dashboard for things to fix. :grin:
Overall this was still one of the best entries I've played in this LD!
It was addictive and I couldn't stop until I won (which took a couple of tries, since it was pretty hard).
This was very stressful (in a good way).
The gameplay, which seemed simple at first glance, was very well thought.
The music was also very cool. I loved it, well done !
> You could add some kind of indication that draws the players attention to the newly introduced systems
Yeah, I did experiment with the idea a bit at some point, but it looked quite yikes, frankly. I do think that some elements need better visual indicators of their interaction state. (The small LEDs on some of them actually were added mainly to better indicate the state).
@paul-avallone
> Sometimes it felt like the space bar wasn’t being responsive.
That's definitely an oversight with the graphic assets on the timer circle as it's not properly aligned with the time where you can and can't press space yet. The red vignette starting to appear is an accurate presentation of the timing, however.
> I wish the end game and the restart needed a specific button to click because I would restart the game immediately after dying and when I finally landed I accidentally skipped past the win screen because I was still trying to play the game.
I've dropped a small update to add a 3 second delay before you can restart the game to ensure players won't skip it by accident.
@juutis
> That said, the keyboard bindings could use some improvement
I agree with that, however I'm not sure which keys to use alternatively, plus the keybindings are baked into the textures in the first place. (Also Cltr+Alt+1/2/3 is a global hotkey for me as well, so I feel the pain)
There's a lot to do here; I appreciate the use of keyboard shortcuts for most of the actions. I was a bit confused at first on what was killing me; I wish the death screen pointed out your mistake. I lost several lives to not knowing how the o2 pump worked (and a few more after when I was only reading the LED instead of looking at the gauge). A lot of this probably just comes to being introduced to mechanics in a high stress environment.
A few more audio cues could be useful. The red screen flash on the space bar one was super helpful, but many others lacked any real big "Pay attention to me" states beyond just being red; the switch board got me a lot since I tended to not focus on it. Perhaps a pulsing or flashing state would help? there's already a lot of red on the screen so a LED turning red doesn't stand out much when you're in a panic.
Honestly though these are all minor annoyances mostly coming back to my lack of skill in this class of game. Other than the O2 pump, everything else was easy to understand in the heat of things and worked as expected. The theme is well represented as well.
Music is comfy.
Nice work!
I just don't understand the losing conditions. Sometimes I press everything right, everything is green but I am ending up dead anyway. Do you have to press space only in the red zone? Or do it more often?
> Do you have to press space only in the red zone? Or do it more often?
Rather as soon as red vignette starts to appear, i.e. once every 10 seconds. The bottom-left circle is not accurate to the timing.
Well, for people who wanted easier gameplay MASSIVE SPOILERS on mechanics:
1. As soon as red vignette appears - it signals that you're clear to press space with a 1s reaction time. Afterwards you take damage every second (indicated by quite heavy vignette + sound que)
2. You'd want to keep your oxygen in yellow bar area on a high side, but not orange. Pump too much - you start to take damage (LED turns orange on low damage and red on high).
2. Pressure you just need to keep low, however pressure chambers (aka switched below the wheel) accelerate pressure build up by 20%.
3. Wipers literally do nothing other than unfog the window.
4. 1-2-3 switches also only control the distance screen display (cut mechanic with you having to press and hold break button at specific altitude instead of as soon as cover opens up)
5. Alt-Shift-Ctrl switches cause ship to move, in theory making shooting asteroids harder. Otherwise do nothing.
6. Asteroids do a bunch of damage if they reach the ship + create window cracks. Just click 'em. Cracks, unless taped - accelerate oxygen leak by 20%.
7. As soon as button opens you should just abandon everything else and hold it. In fact, when button is held I blatantly cheat and disable player taking any damage in order to ensure he doesn't die, however he still dies if he took more than 70HP damage (not gonna say how much damage things do, but asteroids deal a ton, and overpumped oxygen is a sure way to early grave)
Also game split up in roughly 3 stages: First minute is "learning", where you get mechanics unlocking one by one. Second minute is ramp up stage. And last 20 seconds is chaos stage. Game duration was decided on quite early and everything was designed with that in mind.
tl;dr: Just keep oxygen in high yellow bar, keep pressure low, press space every 10 seconds, shoot asteroids, hold the break button and you're set.