Happitech uses your heart rate as an input for a mobile game.
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Happitech measures your heart rate to help control its Skip a Beat mobile game

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Can a game help you get into better emotional shape? The folks at Happitech believe they can make that happen. They’ve created Skip a Beat, the world’s first mobile game that uses a player’s heart rate as a control mechanism.

Amsterdam-based Happitech hopes that it can motivate people to master their moods more through its mobile app, which gives you a better score if your heart rate is at the right range. It measures your heart rate when you put your finger over the camera of your iPhone. It detects the blood flowing through your finger and then calculates your heart rate from the sensor data.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.