You are a programmer working from home. Your enemy is the Chaos: deadlines, bugs, noisy neighbors and a Wi-Fi connection with a mind of its own. You win in either of two ways:
Life: take the Chaos's life to 0. You start with 35 life and the Chaos with 20 on Normal difficulty.
Ultimate Win: collect all five Release Goals: Merged PR, Green Tests, Live in Prod, Happy Client and Work-Life Balance. Hold all five in your hand at once for a Balanced Life.
If your own life reaches 0, you lose.
Your Turn
Play one Focus Hour. Focus Hours give you Focus, the resource you spend on everything else. You may play one per turn.
Spend Focus to raise characters and play Tools, Snacks and Breaks. The number in the circle on a card is its cost.
Seek (2 Focus) draws an extra card.
Proceed to Combat to attack. Characters can attack the turn they are raised.
End Turn. The Chaos then takes its turn.
Tap a card once to select it, then tap it again to play it. You can turn on extra confirmation in Options.
Card Types
Focus Hour: adds 1 Focus. Each shows a spot or a time of day for working.
Character: a person, pet or habit. Attack / Defense are the two numbers at the bottom. Some have keywords.
Tool, Snack, Break: one-time or lasting effects such as boosting a character, healing or drawing cards.
Surprise: hidden cards the Chaos sets. They spring when you act. Your deck has no surprises.
Release Goal: five special cards. Gather all five for the Ultimate Win.
Tap the small magnifier on any card to read it in full. The enlarged card also has a Dev lore note about the idea behind it.
Combat
When you attack
Tap Proceed to Combat, tap the characters you want to attack with, then tap Attack. The Chaos chooses whether to block. Unblocked attackers hit its life. Attacking taps a character, so it cannot block on the Chaos's turn unless it has Async.
When the Chaos attacks
Choose your blockers: tap one of your untapped characters, then tap the attacker it should block. Unblocked attackers hit your life.
Damage
Blocking characters and attackers deal damage equal to their Attack to each other. A character whose damage taken reaches its Defense is defeated. Damage wears off at the end of the turn.
Keywords
Async
Does not tap when it attacks, so it can still block.
Headphones On
Takes half damage (rounded down, minimum 1) from the first hit each turn.
Heisenbug
Characters with cost 2 or less cannot block it.
Race Condition
Characters with cost 3 or less cannot block it.
Tech Lead
Your other characters get +1/+0.
Mentor
Your other characters get +0/+1.
Pair Programming
+1/+0 while you control another Dev.
Good Setup
+1/+1 while you control 4 or more Focus Hours.
Burnout
At the start of your turn, discard a card or it gets -1/-1.
Hotfix
Deals 1 damage to a chosen enemy when it enters play.
Read the Docs
When it enters play, look at the top 4 cards of your deck and take a Release Goal if one is there.
Self-Care
Restores 2 life when it enters play.
Stack Overflow
Draw a card when it enters play.
Code Review
Draw 2 cards when it enters play.
Automate It
Your next Tool, Snack or Break costs 1 less.
Open Source
Creates a 1/1 Contributor token when it enters play.
Fetch Dependency
Fetches a Focus Hour from your deck, tapped, when it enters play.
Reply-All
Your opponent discards a random card when it enters play.
AI Card
Powerful, but counts toward your AI Dependence (see below).
AI Cards and AI Dependence
AI cards are strong: big attackers, extra cards, quick damage. But every one has a cost, because relying on AI too much hurts.
AI Dependence counts how many AI cards you have played this game. It shows beside your Focus once it is above 0.
Many AI cards say "You lose 1 life for each AI card you have played this game." The first costs 1 life, the second 2, and so on. It grows fast.
Other costs: discard a random card, tap one of your Focus Hours (energy and cooling for the data center), or destroy a random character you control (the Replacement Bot replaces your own team).
Human cards bring it back down: Human Code Review, Off-Grid Weekend and Human in the Loop reset your AI Dependence to 0. Touch Grass and Plant a Tree restore life.
The Chaos plays the other side of AI: layoffs, chatbots that replace people, deepfakes, and data-center heatwaves that tap your Focus Hours.
Use AI cards at the right moment, then switch to human cards to reset. Playing every AI card you draw is the quickest way to lose.
Privacy
The game counts anonymous visits and games with a random code. It stores no name, IP address or deck. You can turn it off in Options → More settings and backup.
Leaderboards (under More) show the top 10 for today's Daily Challenge, total campaign stars and the fastest Ultimate Win. Everyone appears as a random name like Player 4821, and the number of players is never shown. Scores played on Intern difficulty are not sent. You can leave the leaderboards in Options.
Game Modes
Remote Dev: a quick game with a random starter deck, or your own saved deck.
Campaign (Career Story): follow the story in order. Chapter 1 is The Job Hunt, Chapter 2 is First Remote Job and Chapter 3 is The AI Era and Chapter 4 is Buhay WFH, a Filipino-flavored work-from-home chapter with brownouts, typhoons, night shifts and videoke Saturdays. Win a battle to open the next and to earn a card. Earn up to three stars per battle. Finishing a chapter unlocks its rare and legendary cards for deck building. Finishing the whole campaign unlocks the Release Goals.
Collection: the Codex has a Collection goals panel showing how many cards you have unlocked in each chapter. Clearing a chapter earns a 🏅 badge, and winning every battle with 3 stars adds a ⭐.
Daily Challenge: one new battle each day. Win quickly and with plenty of life left to earn up to three stars, and keep a daily streak. Best streaks of 3, 7 and 30 days earn the titles Bug Hunter, Sprint Survivor and Staff Engineer.
Play a Scenario Deck: pick a scenario and play with a ready-made deck. It does not change your saved deck. The four Role decks are always unlocked: Frontend Dev (fast and flashy), Backend Dev (sturdy and steady), DevOps Engineer (calm, protective, undoes mistakes) and QA Tester (hard-to-block attackers and area damage). Each includes the five Release Goals once you have unlocked them. You can also load any role deck into the Deck Builder and tweak it.
Record: your wins, streaks, fastest Ultimate Win and your achievements (14 to find, such as Deploy on Friday and Survive, Fully Human and Prompt Addict). Achievements are saved on this device only.
Share my win: after a victory, tap the button to share a funny line about your result.
Difficulty (Options) changes starting life: Intern 40 vs 18, Mid-Level 35 vs 20, Senior 30 vs 22. It applies to your next game.
Deck Builder and Codex
A deck has 40 different cards. Focus Hours are essential, and a typical deck has about 16.
Include all five Release Goals if you want the Ultimate Win. The builder tells you how many your deck has.
Rare and legendary cards are locked until you finish the chapter that opens them.
The Codex lets you browse all cards, filter by type, and read their lore.
Saving and Backup
Progress is stored in your browser on this device. To move it or protect it, open Options → More settings and backup, copy your Backup code and keep it in your notes. To restore, paste the code and press Restore. The backup saves campaign stars, decks, Daily streak and your record.
Clearing your browser data or using "Reset saved data" removes progress on this device, so make a backup first.
Frequently Asked
Can I undo a move?
No. Use the confirm options if you want to avoid mistakes.
Why did I lose a campaign battle?
Later battles scale up. Try a stronger deck, play a Focus Hour every turn, and keep blockers back when the Chaos has big attackers.
The text is too small or too large.
Options has Interface size and Card text size.
The Chaos cheats with surprises.
The Chaos plays surprises and you do not. Read the log and enlarge unfamiliar cards.
Can I replay the tutorial?
Yes. Open More on the main menu and choose Tutorial (replay).