trying to make a game where if you reach a certain number of guesses the while loop breaks

Your code is almost there, you just need to make a few changes. First, you need a break statement within your win condition so the loop stops. Second, you need to change else to elif, or simply just an if. Also, you need to compare guess_count to an int, not a str.

Code:

secret_word = "giraffe"
guess = ""
guess_count = 0

while guess != secret_word:
    guess = input("enter guess: ")
    guess_count += 1
    print(guess_count)
    if guess == secret_word:
        print("You win")
        break
    elif guess_count == 4:
        print("You lost!")
        break

Output:

enter guess: 
dog
1
enter guess: 
dog
2
enter guess: 
dog
3
enter guess: 
dog
4
You lost!

I kind of reformated the code, having else with a condition didn't really make sense so I switched it to:

secret_word = "giraffe"
guess = ""
guess_count = 0
limit = 4

while guess_count < limit:

    guess = input("enter guess: ")
    guess_count += 1
    print(guess_count)

    if guess == secret_word:
        print("Congrats, You Win!!")
        quit()

print('Sorry, too many guesses, you lose! :(')

Good luck with the game!!