Get Yoked

Get Yoked: A Roguelike Deckbuilder Where the Only Enemy Is Your Own Training Schedule

Get Yoked: Extreme Bodybuilding is a card game about becoming, in its own words, an absolute unit. You are not fighting anything. There is no monster, no health bar, no attack. You are building a body — arms, chest, legs, glutes — out of a deck of workout cards, and trying to walk onto a competition stage with enough muscle to win.

What makes it a genuine roguelike deckbuilder rather than a joke about protein shakes is the trade sitting under every single card. Every workout that grows you also wears you down. Play too many, too fast, and you do not lose a fight — you tear something. The whole game is the tension between wanting more and being able to survive more, which is, if you think about it, exactly what actual bodybuilding is.

It comes from Greg Austin, funded by Free Lives — the South African studio behind Broforce and Terra Nil — and currently sits at 4.5 out of 5 from 571 ratings on itch.io.

Controls

Mouse only. Click or drag and drop cards to play them, and click the buttons. That is the entire interface — no keyboard shortcuts to learn, no twitch element anywhere. This is a game you can play slowly with one hand.

Gains and Fatigue: the Two Numbers That Matter

Strip out the comedy and the loop is beautifully tight:

• 💪 Workout cards give Gains. And they give them where you train — play Arms and your arms grow. The card you pick is not just "damage", it is a decision about what your body is going to look like.
• 🥵 Workouts also build Fatigue. This is the hidden cost on every good card. Fatigue accumulates as you train.
• 🤕 Too much Fatigue means Injury. This is the fail state, and it is entirely self-inflicted. Nothing in this game attacks you. You do it to yourself by pushing one rep too far.
• 😴 Rest cards and supplement cards are the counter-play. They either bring Fatigue back down or push your Gains up, and knowing when to spend a turn on recovery instead of growth is the actual skill.
• 🏆 Competitions set a minimum. You are not chasing an unlimited score — each competition has a minimum Gains threshold you have to hit to win, which turns every run into a race against your own body’s limits.

That threshold is what stops the safe strategy from working. You cannot simply rest your way to a clean run: resting costs turns, turns are finite, and the competition does not care that you are well-rested if you turn up small.

Your Build Is a Physique

This is the part that makes Get Yoked feel different from other deckbuilders. In most of them you build a damage archetype. Here you build a shape, and the game fully commits to letting you be weird about it.

You can spread your training evenly and turn up as a balanced competitor. Or you can do what the developer openly encourages and go all in on one region — "really into your Glutes? No problem, become a Glutes purist and get those buns." Specialising concentrates your card synergies and your Gains into one place, which is powerful, and leaves the rest of you comically underdeveloped, which is the joke and also a real strategic risk depending on what the competition is asking for.

The result is that two runs of Get Yoked do not just play differently, they look different. Your deck is visible on the character.

Structurally Slay the Spire, Tonally Not At All

If you have played roguelike deckbuilders, the bones will be immediately familiar: a run made of successive checks, a deck you improve between them, cards and items picked up along the way, and a difficulty curve that punishes a deck without a plan. Players in the itch comments make the Slay the Spire comparison constantly, and it is fair.

What is entirely different is everything around the bones. Get Yoked is tagged non-violent, comedy and relaxing, and it means all three. There is no combat to lose, no enemy turn to dread, and nothing threatening on screen. The pressure is purely arithmetic — can you reach the number before your body gives out — which makes it one of the very few games in the genre you can play while genuinely unwinding.

Who Made It

• 🎮 Game by Greg Austin (gregs-games), built in Unity.
• 🎵 Music, voices and sound by Sybersyn — and the voice work does a lot of the comedic lifting here.
• 🎨 Card art, events and icons by Nix Bee, which is why the cards read instantly despite there being a lot of them.
• 💰 Funded by Free Lives, the studio behind Broforce and Terra Nil.

The itch page also states plainly that no generative AI was used — every card illustration is drawn.

It Is Officially a Prototype

Worth knowing going in: Get Yoked is listed as a prototype, and it is in active development rather than finished. Greg posts monthly devlogs under the title MUSCLES MONTHLY, there is a Steam page and a playtest, and the browser build here is the free public version of a game that is still growing.

In practice that means it is generous rather than incomplete — there is a full, satisfying run loop in here, and the rough edges are the sort of thing you notice on run twelve, not run one. It also means the balance you learn today may shift; that is the deal with prototypes, and this one is well worth taking.

Tips for Your First Runs

• Read the competition target first. Everything you do should be measured against the minimum Gains you actually need. Overshooting one body part while missing the requirement is the most common way to lose.
• Fatigue is a budget, not a warning. Do not treat it as something to avoid — treat it as a resource you are allowed to spend right up to the edge. Finishing a run with unused Fatigue capacity means you left Gains on the table.
• Bank a rest card for emergencies. Holding one recovery option in reserve is what turns a near-injury into a merely expensive turn.
• Commit to a shape early. Spreading thin gives you a mediocre everything. Picking a region and stacking its cards concentrates your synergies and makes the numbers move properly.
• Supplements are multipliers, not top-ups. They are worth the most when played on a body part you are already invested in, not to patch a weak area.
• Take your time. Nothing is on a timer. The whole game is a maths problem, and there is no penalty for sitting and reading your hand properly.

If You Like This One

If the roguelike build-crafting is what grabbed you rather than the muscles, Brotato runs the same "commit to a build and survive escalating checks" logic in real time with guns instead of dumbbells. And if you enjoy the loop of failing, spending what you earned and going again a bit stronger, Into Space 2 is that idea in its purest form.

No download and no account needed — load it up, play some Arms, and see how big you can get before something snaps.