Heartbeats in Perfect Sync: Pulse Pounding Edition

In your city, there’s an otherworldly force that lurks in the hearts of many: The Pulse. Feeding on negative emotions, they’ll devour everything... if not for a group of ordinary people with a mysterious app installed on their phones. Activate the app and you’ll be bestowed with a weapon that can purge the Pulse, but opening your heart can be dangerous...

October 2024 Update: The Pulse-Pounding extended edition of Heartbeats in Perfect Sync is now live! Featuring revised rules, more character options, city-building and character relationship mechanics, this update is sure to get your heart racing! The previous version of the game rules is still available, for those who prefer a micro-RPG experience. Thank you for all your support!

Heartbeats in Perfect Sync is a tabletop RPG inspired by the shounen battle aesthetic in games like The World Ends With You, Kingdom Hearts, Zenless Zone Zero and Under Night In-Birth. Play as a group of ordinary people who fight monsters with ridiculously over-the-top weapons.

Use the Heart Rate system (a pool of dice that increases and decreases as you make rolls and ratchet up your character's emotional tension) to perform astounding Perfect Sync attacks with your allies on the same wavelength.

But beware - if your Heart Rate gets too high or too low, your character will become Heartbroken, a dark version of themselves with new abilities and a high budget transformation cutscene.

Fonts used are from Google Fonts, BlamBot and Chequered Ink. Illustrations are writer’s own, heart graphic from game-icons.net, photography from Unsplash.com. Special thanks to Will Uhl (@RaffiTheOwl), Jay (@Stabbyness), and Austin (@CorpGeomancy).