HeartBeat Match is a rhythm-based dating sim where every date is a completely different rhythm game, with her own music genre, her own mechanic, and her own personality.

You are BLANK. In a city bursting with colorful silhouettes, you are the only white slender figure. You have been a shut-in long enough that the idea you had about people faded completely, and your cat Aka has decided that today is where it ends. She chews through your computer cables. Then, to your complete shock, she starts talking. She learned your language for exactly one reason: to teach you how to talk to girls.

Three girls. Three hearts to conquer.

• Jade (Lo-Fi): Soft-spoken, studious and easily flustered, hiding behind textbooks and lo-fi playlists.

• Nova (EDM): An extroverted night owl who lives for clubs, neon and dancing, and who is always in control.

• Kitty (Chiptune): A hyper e-girl obsessed with cats, Japan and plushies. Chaotic on the surface, with a genuine heart underneath.

Each girl has her own self-contained story, told across a series of dates. You are never locked into one of them. Take Jade to her third date, switch to Nova, come back to Jade whenever you feel like it. They fall for you progressively as you push their route forward, and the routes can merge between them from time to time.

Every date is a rhythm game

First comes the dialogue: a visual novel scene that pushes her story forward, sets up where you are, and gives your companion the room to bother you.

Then the music starts. Keep the tempo. Lose all your HP and the date ends on the spot, right in front of her.

Every girl plays differently

This is not one chart reader in three outfits. Her genre decides her mechanic.

Jade's notes scroll around a rotating vinyl record. Kitty plays copy-cat: watch the pattern, then play it back. Nova's is a reinterpretation of DDR-like rhythm games, rebuilt around keyboard and controller inputs.

The Heart Meter and Sync Mode

Running underneath every date is the Heart Meter, an animated fluid gauge that fills from empty as you land notes.

Get it to 100% and you can spend it to trigger Sync Mode. While it is running, every note you hit registers as PERFECT no matter how sloppy your timing actually is, the screen pulses on the beat, and a Perfect Sync banner takes over the display. The meter drains the whole time, so the question is never whether to use it, only when. And a single MISS cancels Sync Mode instantly and empties the meter back to zero.

Hearts, scores and second chances

The result screen breaks down the whole performance: hearts earned from 0 to 5, your full PERFECT, GOOD, BAD and MISS accuracy split, your highest combo of the date, a timeline replaying every note across the entire song, and your CAT-COINS payout.

Hearts are how you progress. Your total is cumulative across every date on every route, and higher totals unlock the better items in the city's shops. Replays only count the difference, so four hearts last time and five this time means you gained one, not five. Going back to clean up a date you already passed is always worth something. Cat Coins pay out after every date, pass or fail, equal to your accuracy percentage. Fail a date and nothing is permanently lost.

Try again, try harder!

The soundtrack

Every single date has its own original song. The girl defines the genre. The song defines the difficulty by enhancing BPM, quantity of notes, intensity and length.

A city to explore between dates

The city is on the face of the sea, set against the mountains, and you move through it freely, time's passing and weather's changing. BLANK's house is there, without any colours like him. So are the girls' houses, each themed to her genre. So are the places you will take them: the beach, the dock, the cinema, the library, the mall, the park or a dark forest.

Six NPC shops sit between you and a better date.

• Food from the ice cream shop, the pizza place and the restaurant, buying you extra maximum HP, regeneration or shields.

• Gifts from the flower shop, the jeweller and the clothing store, giving you a partially pre-filled Heart Meter, a faster fill rate or a wider hit window.

Both kinds are single-use, equipped before you head out, and spent on that date alone. They are also entirely optional. A player with sharp enough timing can finish the whole game without buying anything.