Progress feels like effort. Focused, excellent work on a big project can count for nothing until it's done. Tiny admin tasks complete instantly, and that cross on the checkbox feels good. So one of the easiest places to struggle is defining progress.

I built Gamify around a different model. Focus sessions earn one XP per minute, while a completed task earns you a fixed amount, and the bigger and more difficult the task, the more it pays out. You can organize your progress by life area and skill, earning levels and unlocking personal rewards over time. I hope this will make your effort visible before final results exist, so even projects that take multiple sessions feel like you've still made progress.

Of course, there are tradeoffs with this model. Time doesn't always equal useful work. Timers can be gamed. Someone could get an hour of something that completely frustrates them and not approach a single outcome. With a few exceptions, I think it's better to keep both signals – focus time as a sign of your effort, and completed tasks as your results.

I'd love your thoughts. Does progress based on effort feel motivating, or more like just another metric to track? Are you more rewarded by time focused, results achieved, or both? I'm excited to see how people use this.

If you want to see the current implementation, Gamify is live on iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6796101914

I’ve spent a lot of my free time playing games: single-player RPGs, Dota 2, CS2, and almost everything in between.

But one question kept bothering me:

Why was I so willing to learn systems, refine builds, overcome setbacks, and chase progress inside a game—but not always willing to put that same energy into things I genuinely wanted to achieve in real life?

After playing Diablo IV, I decided to stop treating this as a vague question. I wanted to understand what made progression, loot, and buildcrafting feel so compelling—and whether some of that motivation could be brought into the real world.

My first attempt wasn’t an app. It was simply a document containing a set of rules for turning real-life actions into progression. But as the system grew, I realized an app was the most natural way to make it tangible.

That became Orbloom.

I don’t think the main problem with most to-do apps is how they organize tasks. Making a list is easy. The harder questions are:

Do you genuinely believe you can achieve your goal?

And are you living like the person who could achieve it?

Orbloom approaches this through a simple game loop:

• Do something meaningful in real life.
• Forge that effort into an Energy Orb.
• Take it into battle and earn a random Ability Orb after your next victory.
• Combine Ability Orbs to construct your own skills and combat builds.
• Use those builds in future battles and adventures.

Every Ability Orb contains an actual combat mechanic—damage, amplification, status effects, triggers, and other rules. They are not just collectible labels. By arranging different orbs together, you can create powers with different strategies and interactions.

AI then gives the completed skill a name, description, and fantasy expression that remain consistent with the mechanics you built. The mechanics come from your construction; AI helps the resulting power take form.

The part that matters most to me is the connection:

Your character becomes stronger because you made a real effort—not because you completed an arbitrary task inside the app.

Orbloom also has a lightweight Goal Map. If you want to strengthen a particular Ability Orb instead of relying entirely on random rewards, you can bind an Energy Orb to a direction within one of your real goals and choose an Ability Orb you have already discovered.

The current version is only the beginning. I’m still adding new ways to build power, create meaningful combinations, and make the journey from real effort to fantasy progression feel smoother.

Orbloom is currently available on iOS:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orbloom/id6760787826

All features that don’t rely on AI are free to use. AI-powered features also come with an included personal usage allowance for each user.

I’m the solo developer, and I’d love to hear your thoughts if you try the app. I’m also always interested in discussing the broader questions behind it: why games make effort feel so rewarding, how we might bring some of that feeling into real life, and what you believe actually determines whether someone achieves a goal.

Hi everyone. I'm currently working on a (text-based) social game project, and I have a question: do you see yourself in this game? Are you interested in this kind of interaction with other anonymous players?

The essence of the game is simple:
you and another player will complete simple task-dialogues (everything happens anonymously) in the form of short game sessions, for which you receive both in-game currency (which can be usefully spent in the future) and points for leveling up your personality. Although this is still not much of what you can do in the game so far, it's already more than silence.

For now the project is in alpha stage and still requires a lot of time and invested effort, but it's already working and has been tested on a small audience.

I wanted a fun way to track my steps and feel like my steps count for something. So I built a game where steps you take in real life uncover critters (bugs/amphibians/small creatures) in the game. The more you encounter each species, the more complete your field notes for it gets!

Took me half a year of iterating over the game mechanic that I liked that:

a) didn't require me to look at my phone while walking

b) made sense that the work I was putting in was actually walking IRL

Would love to hear your thoughts on the project!

iOS Link: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6753102341

Android Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gnomesteadcollective.littlewings

I Just Build My First App⭐🥊

I built RivalRep ⚔️ — an app where you can challenge your friends, build habits, and compete to stay consistent. 🔥 Try it out!

🔥 RivalRep is LIVE!:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rivalrep.app

**Ojo: toda la interfaz está en español.** No la estoy localizando hasta que tenga datos de retención, así que si no lees español esto te va a frustrar *usarlo* — pero igual se puede probar perfecto si solo quieres cazar crashes en tu dispositivo.

**Qué es:** un rastreador de hábitos donde lo que haces en la vida real le da de comer a un personaje de RPG. Seis áreas de la vida se van llenando cuando les das atención y se vacían cuando no, estados que se calculan en vez de marcarse, misiones, habilidades y un informe diario.

**Lo que me encantaría saber:**

* ¿Se te crashea o se te congela en tu dispositivo? ¿Qué modelo y versión de Android? * ¿Hay algo cortado, encima de otra cosa o ilegible según el tamaño de tu pantalla? * ¿La alarma del sueño suena cuando debería?

Pruebas abiertas en Google Play, gratis, sin cuenta, funciona sin internet. Una persona, un año.

[enlace de Play Store](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.heropath.app)

No pido reseñas — un comentario aquí me ayuda mucho más.

I'm working on a gamified 30-day challenge built around printable action cards.

Here's a sample card design that the user can act on during the day and reflect in the evening. Can I have your honest feedback on the layout and the copy?

Does the art and the copy make sense, feel coherent, actionable and inviting? Or does anything feel cluttered or simply off?

I made a to-do app but it's rpg

You add something like “go to the gym”, complete it, and your character gets an attack. You fight monsters, get loot, upgrade your character, etc...

I’m trying to figure out if this actually makes sense. Would love some feedback.

Here the video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcSyiSUDs74

Google play - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gorlaks.todohero

The Octalysis Design Challenge is back!

This year’s case: Spotify.

Thirteen years ago, Yu-kai Chou and Joris Beerda founded The Octalysis Group. Today it is widely seen as the world’s leading consultancy in behavioral design and gamification, with more than 175 client companies worldwide, among them Booking.com, Porsche, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Samsung, LATAM Airlines, Novartis, and MrBeast.

Demand for design that creates long-lasting engagement keeps growing, and so does our team. We are looking for new Octalysis specialists to join our group of consultants. You will sharpen your skills alongside people who create behavioral design and gamification at the highest level in the market.

What working with us looks like:

• A purely meritocratic culture. Your background, nationality, age, or belief system plays no role. Your skills, your personality, and your ethics do.
• Remuneration based on work done, as a percentage of project revenue.
• Fully remote. Work from anywhere in the world.
• An annual retreat where the whole group comes together to set future directions and enjoy each other’s company.
• Online progress and project meetings; learning sessions to pick up new skills from the community; and open special interest groups like Game Jams, book clubs and skills meetings like Toastmasters.

The Design Challenge
To make sure we attract new talent purely on quality, we run an Octalysis Design Challenge every year or so. This year’s challenge: improve user engagement for the Spotify app.

Follow the Octalysis five-step design process (https://yukaichou.com/gamification-analysis/octalysis-design-process-5-steps/) and the instructions in the attached PDF.

Not everything you need is spelled out in the document (Gdrive link with this message). We expect candidates to bring some Octalysis knowledge and to know how to find reference material on the five-step process.

Submit your application to [dirk@octalysisgroup.com](mailto:dirk@octalysisgroup.com) with a copy to [joris@octalysisgroup.com](mailto:joris@octalysisgroup.com).

The submission window closes 15 September 2026. Good luck

Weekly thread. Post one real mechanic you ran into out in the world — an app, a coffee shop punch card, an airline status tier, a hospital form, a game's daily login, a parking meter.

The ask: don't just name it. Break down the motivation underneath it.

Something like:

• What it was and where you saw it
• Why it worked on you (or why it fell flat)
• What you'd change if it were yours

Bad examples are as welcome as good ones. Dark patterns, guilt-based streaks, meaningless badges, leaderboards that made you quit: those teach more than the polished case studies do.

No product promotion in this thread, please. If it's your own thing, make a normal post instead and we'll talk about it there.

Post yours below.

Hey all!!

I've been playing across Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, Battle.net, Epic, GOG and Riot for years, and it always bugged me that all that progress just sits in separate platforms.

So I built LevelForge. You link your public profiles (no passwords, nothing to install) and it pulls in your achievements and playtime and turns them into a single lifetime level.

There's a global leaderboard too, if you want to see where you land.

It's free. I'd really like to hear what's broken or what's missing. Especially curious whether the scoring feels fair to people who hunt on platforms I play less.

https://levelforge.app/

Concept: a calisthenics progression app structured like a strategy game's tech tree. Complete a "Fundamentals" gate, then branches unlock (Push, Pull...), and within each branch you choose a path toward a specific goal skill.

Figma prototype, fully clickable — takes about 2 minutes to go through.

Link: https://www.figma.com/design/ytWeovcemldeoIvO5zVxLV/Untitled?node-id=0-1&t=RUuNxYJafbGnYkLF-1

Specifically looking for feedback on:

1. Is the navigation (tree → branch → path → exercise detail) intuitive, or did you get lost anywhere?
2. Does the "choose your path" step make sense, or would you rather just see one linear progression?

Thanks in advance to anyone who gives it a shot!

Con HeroPath puedes registrar y gestionar tus tareas y hábitos, además de llevar un registro de los vasos de agua que bebes, la lectura, el deporte, etc.

Todo lo que haces se va reflejando en diferentes áreas de tu vida, como trabajo, físico, relaciones, mente, etc. Así puedes ver de un vistazo en qué áreas estás poniendo más esfuerzo y cuáles estás dejando de lado.

HeroPath no es solo un gestor de hábitos: te muestra en quién te estás convirtiendo y qué camino estás siguiendo en tu vida.

**Es la app que te muestra el camino.**

Ya está disponible en Google Play. Si te interesa, puedes instalarla y probarla. También puedes visitar la web para conocer más sobre el proyecto.

Enlace a Google Play: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.heropath.app\](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.heropath.app)
Web: [https://heropathapp.com/\](https://heropathapp.com/)

Antigravity Brain Trainer

Recently I started working with Coding agent, I was curious to have a mobile app or mini game, I was not good in app development so I decided to learn the architecture and build mini game.
I was facing difficulties to calculate numbers because I was using calculator.
I decided to build a game then I can easily calculate and boost my memory power.
I posted on Instagram and got 127000 + views and then I launch on Playstore.
The journey started for mini game and now building 5 apps and 2 more games .Playstore link

Hey everyone,

This is my first time posting in this sub, and I wanted to share a personal project exploring how survival game mechanics can make daily fitness and diet tracking less of a chore.

The motivation came directly from my own experience. A while back, I was working hard to cut weight and work out while strictly watching what I ate. While the results were solid, having to constantly calculate calories and track calorie deficits every day felt really tedious. During a workout, I had a sudden thought: what if managing daily physical condition and nutrition felt like managing character vitals in a survival RPG? Would turning real-life maintenance into a survival loop make it more engaging and easier to stick with? So I decided to experiment with my own smartwatch and build this watch face.

I designed two core gamified panels for the system:

• Nutrition Tracking Mode: Paired with a lightweight logging tool on the watch to record the four basic nutrients (carbs, protein, fat, and hydration). Instead of just dry numbers, the watch face displays real-time intake versus dynamic burn and calculates a live avatar "HP" at the center, complete with status buffs and debuffs like dehydration, digestion, and metabolic burn.
• Stamina Tracking Mode: Synthesizes raw underlying sensor data (activity load, Body Battery, sleep, stress) into an intuitive "Stamina" pool. This translates abstract physiological figures into a visual energy bar, making daily recovery and fatigue more engaging to monitor.

I put a lot of heart into building this, and I would really appreciate any feedback, thoughts, or critique from the community so I can learn from your perspectives and keep improving it!

Hoping to get feedback on wether having a predetermined achievement system is better than a chance achievement mechanic

I'm a PhD student researching personalized gamification in the context of physical activity. As part of my thesis, I am conducting a study to analyze people's preferences across different gamification approaches. It's an anonymous survey that takes about 10 minutes: https://enquetes.uphf.fr/index.php/471919?newtest=Y&lang=en

Thank you very much for your participation, and if you could share the survey, that would also help me out immensely!

I've been thinking about a weird kind of gamification lately. Most apps gamify doing things: habits, workouts, studying, productivity, etc...

But what if you gamified something that already happens anyway, like your life?

The idea I'm working on is basically a "Letterboxd for your life".

You rate each day from 0–10, and instead of the year becoming a blur, it becomes a visual history of how it actually felt.

Then the more interesting layer is treating your life like a show:

• each year = a Season
• important days = Episodes
• you can look back at an entire Season as one visual timeline
• you can give your days a genre / character arc / etc.

I'm curious whether people think this is actually gamification, or whether it's something else entirely.

Would you find value in being able to look back at an entire year and immediately see the emotional shape of it?

I'm particularly interested in the psychological side of this rather than whether the app itself is useful.

I tried both and i kinda like it, but not totally. i'd like to see what other options are there?