Burn Rate is a free browser deckbuilder about a one-bot startup. Ship products, grow an audience, earn trust, and pay the power bill every five days or get unplugged. Play a fresh shared Daily deck, a random Run, or Rush with 20 seconds per day.

Play on itch: https://secretwall.itch.io/burn-rate

A small game with room to grow

There are 45 illustrated cards, 20 illustrated tools and five founders to unlock. Runs last 25 days, with optional overtime toward the day-50 IPO. A three-day playable tutorial introduces the loop. Daily streaks, levels and cosmetic unlocks give you reasons to return.

BurnBot is a simulated rival, not a live player. The Daily deck is the same for everyone that day; your result grid lets you compare outcomes without revealing the cards.

The spoiler-free grid

Each square represents a day's sales relative to the pace needed for that cycle's power bill. Green is at or above pace, yellow at least half, black below half. A completed five-day row ends with a paid/unpaid marker. The grid contains no card names. It is available in the itch build as well as the site version.

A site-only rank experiment

The separate site version at https://dmoney081.github.io/the-130-wall/burn/ also attempts an approximate global Daily rank using anonymous public counters. This is not present in the itch, supporter or portal builds, and it is not a live-player leaderboard.

Threshold buckets estimate a percentile instead of storing a list of individual scores. Low participation or a failed counter request can mean no percentile appears. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control disable the global counter feature. Public counters can be inflated, so the estimate is not competitive verification.

Optional Supporter Edition

The browser game stays free. The optional $3-minimum Supporter Edition on itch is a self-contained download: unzip it and open index.html in a modern browser. It makes all five desks and the Classic, Retro, Neon and Pumpkin bot skins available immediately. Gold and Ghost still require their achievements. It also includes a general supporter thank-you in the credits, not personalized name credits.

The game, cards, modes and Daily deck are the same as in the free itch build. There is no gameplay advantage. No connection is required to play; optional donate/share links open external pages only if selected. Progress is stored per browser/origin, so it does not transfer automatically from the web game to the download.

Try today's deck: https://secretwall.itch.io/burn-rate
More projects: https://dmoney081.github.io/the-130-wall/

Made with AI assistance.