A SYMBOLIC LIFE ROGUELIKE

Your chart is the class.
Your choices are the life.

Discover a personal symbolic Build, make dramatic choices, and watch old consequences return. Then change one turning point and live the parallel life.

PERSONAL SYMBOLIC BUILDCONSEQUENCES THAT RETURNPARALLEL LIVESFULLY PLAYABLE WITHOUT AI
NATAL · SEVEN KILLINGS

The Edge

Low-odds routes become more valuable. Risk itself becomes the Build.

LOW ODDS · 1.6× REWARD
NATAL · INDIRECT WEALTH

Windfall

A failed wealth event rolls again. The second answer must be accepted.

WEALTH REROLL
NATAL · DIRECT RESOURCE

Mentor

Knowledge becomes probability. Preparation changes what fate can reach.

KNOWLEDGE → FATE

WHAT IF YOU CHOSE DIFFERENTLY?

One decision. Two complete lives.

ORIGINAL LIFEI KEPT THE JOBThe Steady Hand · Career 72
VS
PARALLEL LIFEI LEFT AT 32The Open Road · Happiness 84

Fate preserves everything before the turning point, forces a different choice, and reveals what follows.

FIVE CARD ARCHETYPES

NATALBorn with the Build
PHASECurrent Qi changes the rules
LIFEChoices create new abilities
SCARFailure unlocks rare routes
DEFIANCESpend Fate to break rules

THE RUN

Eight gates. One life.

01The Threshold
02The Climb
03The Wager
04The Promise
05The Crown
06The Ledger
07The Turning
08The Last Light

SEE A CONSEQUENCE RETURN

A choice becomes memory.

At 24, your mentor offers a difficult opening. Pick the answer; the same person and decision return eighteen years later.

AGE 42 · FATE THREAD RETURNSChoose at age 24 to see this future.The result is a fixed product demonstration—not a personal prediction.

About Fate

Fate is a free browser-based symbolic life roguelike developed by Harpd Labs. It combines narrative choice-driven gameplay with the symbolic framework of the Chinese Ten Gods (BaZi) system, reimagined as game mechanics rather than fortune-telling. Players enter their birth date to generate a personal symbolic Build — a set of starting cards and abilities shaped by element relationships and the Ten-God profile. This Build functions like a character class in a traditional roguelike.

The game unfolds across eight thematic gates — The Threshold, The Climb, The Wager, The Promise, The Crown, The Ledger, The Turning, and The Last Light — each representing a chapter of a fictional life from age 18 onward. At every gate, players make choices that affect five life stats: Wealth, Career, Knowledge, Relationship, and Happiness. Choices succeed or fail based on probability modified by card play, elemental Qi cycles, and Build synergies, but the outcomes always advance the narrative.

A key mechanic is the Fate Thread system: characters and decisions from earlier gates return later in life, creating a sense of consequence and continuity. After completing a life, players can choose a turning point, fork the timeline, and play the parallel life that would have unfolded from a different choice — then compare both outcomes side by side. The game includes five card archetypes (Natal, Phase, Life, Scar, and Defiance), a five-element combo system (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water), and a Life Archive that tracks discovered builds, titles, and outcomes across runs.

Fate is entertainment, not a prediction or fortune-telling tool. The Start-of-Spring BaZi convention is used only to create the symbolic game Build. The game is fully playable without any AI features — AI is used optionally to enrich the final biography, and the complete ending works without it.

Read the full gameplay guide → · Play Fate now →