Coder's life

In Coder's life, you're a game dev student trying to balance your mental and physical health with your success in the classroom.
This is our first game, created for the Gamedev.js Jam 2025, which was also our first game jam. The theme was “Balance”.
The idea of using cards and hourglasses to balance states was lightly inspired by a tabletop game called Kites, Time to Fly.

Instructions
3 hourglasses represent your physical and mental health and your success at school.
The aim is to prevent the 3 hourglasses from running out.

Time passes during the day, starting at midnight, followed by morning, class in the afternoon, and then the evening ad midnight. Then, if you've survived, another day begins.

To balance the states, you can take action by playing cards with keys 1 to 5 on the keyboard.

Cards have different effects on the hourglasses, and a set duration of effect.

The duration of the effect is shown in the top right-hand corner of the card, as a number of hours.

More importantly, the cards have a value representing an effect on each hourglass. If the value is positive, e.g. +, ++, +++, the hourglass reverses and you regain time in the hourglass, instead of losing it.
If the value is negative, the hourglass empties even faster!
The higher the number of symbols (+ or -), the faster the hourglass is changing.
If there is no value, there is no effect and the hourglass continues to empty at its normal tempo.

Tip: Click in the game window at the beginning to set focus.

Enjoy!

Team:
Art design and UI: z99k7
Game Design and Dev: MaraJadeSky
Music and sounds: SETTOR

v2 published 2025-05-10 (after end of ranking period for game jam)