Dungeons & Heartbeats

Your heart rate is the controller. Needs an Apple Watch or Bluetooth HR strap. Play your way to better health.

Your heart rate is the controller.

REQUIRES A LIVE HEART RATE SOURCE: an Apple Watch, or any Bluetooth heart rate strap. There is no manual mode. A phone or tablet on its own cannot play this game.

Get on a treadmill, bike or rower, raise your heart rate to the target the game gives you, and your hero cuts through the dungeon.

No buttons, no tapping. Real cardio in pixel art, not another bar chart.

HOW IT PLAYS

Pick a path, a length, and how hard you want to go today. The game draws one moving target from your own heart-rate reserve.

Land inside it and the blows connect, the combo climbs, the score runs. Fall off and enemies get through, the chain breaks. A short grace window forgives a dip, so one stray reading never costs a run.

THREE HERO PATHS

Each path is a real training style that builds a different part of your heart health.

GUARDIAN, Steady State. One pace, start to finish. Builds ENDURANCE, the aerobic base that pulls your resting heart rate down.

CRUSADER, The Climb. Effort rises to a summit, then eases home. Builds RESILIENCE, your capacity for progressively harder work.

BERSERKER, Intervals. Hard bursts to your ceiling, easy recoveries between. Builds VITALITY, the top end of your fitness, your VO2max.

Every path runs at 10, 15, 20, 30, or 45 minutes: fifteen trials across nine pixel-art biomes and thirteen enemies.

YOU SET THE INTENSITY

Before every run you choose a Max Target: Easy, Moderate, Hard, or Peak. The whole workout rescales to it, so the same trial is gentle on a tired Tuesday and savage on a good Saturday.

Targets come from your heart-rate reserve (the Karvonen method): your resting heart rate, and a max you measure or estimate from age.

YOUR HEART LEVELS UP

Every session levels all three aspects from your real time-in-zone data, whichever path you ran. Your Heart Health Level blends Endurance, Resilience and Vitality, weighted for balance, so your weakest aspect is worth the most.

Finished runs are graded on time in your target zone: Stone, Iron, Bronze, Gold, Mythic. Your best run sets the frame, and a bad day never takes it back. Clear the same trial five times and it raises a statue in your Kingdom, Mythic at ten.

Cut a run short and it still counts: XP, training minutes and streak all bank. Miss a day and a banked streak freeze covers it, earned every five days you show up.

YOUR KINGDOM

One screen holds your portrait and title, Heart Health Level, day streak, lifetime workouts, every hero's level, and your history. Open any run for its time in zone, average and peak heart rate, and calories.

WHAT YOU NEED

An Apple Watch, or any Bluetooth heart rate strap or armband on the standard Heart Rate Profile - most Polar, Garmin, Wahoo and Coospo straps included.

With a Watch, open the app on your wrist and leave it there. With a strap, pick it once and it reconnects by itself before every later trial. No iPad can pair with a Watch, so there the app goes straight to finding your strap.

iPhone on iOS 15, Apple Watch on watchOS 10, iPad on iPadOS 15 (iPadOS 17 to log runs to Health). Setup pulls your age, sex, weight, height and resting heart rate from Apple Health, and finished runs write back as workouts, so the effort lands on your rings.

WHAT IT COSTS

Free to download, with one full trial, Guardian at ten minutes, unlocked permanently. Not a countdown, not a demo: the whole level, as often as you like, no account, no email. One purchase of $4.99 unlocks the other fourteen forever. No subscription, no ads.

BEFORE YOU START

For fitness and entertainment. Not medical advice, not a medical device. Exercise within your abilities, and see your doctor first if you have a heart or cardiovascular condition. Stop at once if you feel chest pain, dizziness, faintness or severe shortness of breath. Zones are estimates. Play on stationary equipment; the game wants your eyes on the screen.

Stop watching numbers go up. Start running for something.