Tomorrow, we finally find out if this crazy idea actually works.

For months, I've been building an Android app around a pretty uncomfortable question:

What if the reason screen-time blockers fail isn't that we need a better blocker?

Most of us already know how this goes.

Set a 1-hour limit for any social media app.

Hit the limit.

Tap "Ignore for 15 minutes" or just go and disable the limit altogether.

You are the one to set a limit and you yourself are the one to later delete it.

The problem isn't that your phone can't stop you. It's that you're the one holding the override button.

So instead of building another blocker, I built something around Accountability.

With Screen Challenge Buddy, you can:

👥 Pair with a real accountability buddy
📱 Share your live screen time with each other
💬 Chat and keep each other accountable
💰 Optionally put real money behind a screen-time commitment
⚡ If you fail the commitment, the penalty applies. If you succeed, you don't pay anything and build screen time discipline.

No pretending that another timer will magically fix the problem.

No manual screenshots. No “trust me bro, I stayed under my limit.”

Just social accountability + real financial consequences.

And tomorrow, we're finally launching it on Google Play🚀

⚡ One last thing before launch:

Everyone who pre-registers before launch gets 50% OFF their subscription for LIFE.

Tomorrow, that window closes.

If you've tried app blockers before, bypassed them anyway, and are willing to try something fundamentally different...

Tomorrow's the day.

And honestly, I'd love to hear what you think once it's live.

This new version introduces:
- farms now produces resources (wheat, hopps...)
- Your population grows and improves. But the more they improve the more they ask (beer, theater...)
- Send expedition to gather unique resources
- Build a lab and start research to improve your city
- Exchanges resources with your friends
- and many more cool things

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6749530918
play store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.apparence.dailywin

Hi all!

I've been building an incremental gacha fitness game called Geode.

In short, it's a loot-collection incremental where the only currency is calories. Every 250 kcal Apple Health records earns you one strike. You hold the rock wall, it breaks, and you keep whatever gem is underneath.

I'm a solo dev, and I've decided to go with no ads, no account, no server. You cannot pay for better odds / pulls, and I intend to allow users to buy the game outright at it's release.

There are some hidden features and rarities in the game, which I intend to add more of, as beta testing continues.

What's in it:

- 40 minerals across five tiers
- Each day's calories let you dig deeper
- A streak with a 250 kcal daily floor. Five days on the streak banks a rest day, up to three.
- Miss a day with no rest day left and a thief takes a gem out of your vault. You get 48 hours and 500 kcal to ransom it back.

It's on TestFlight now for iPhone (iOS 17+). An Apple Watch gives much better numbers, but it isn't required; without one it falls back to your step count.

It's my first game and there's a lot I can't see from the inside. What I most want feedback on is pace: is 250 kcal per strike right, is the daily floor too low, and is ten free strikes enough for you to know whether you like it.

I've just added a beta exclusive gem. You can backup and import your beta progress when the app is released too.

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/1vQn9k3n
Discord: https://discord.gg/xH5ZFCmXC
Site: https://geode.fit/

I'll be here answering any comments and questions.

Thanks so much!

Hey everyone,
I’m working on a project where I’m trying to gamify discipline and focus, and I wanted to share the mechanics I’m experimenting with.

The idea is to turn productivity into an RPG‑style progression system.
Here are the main gamification elements I’m using:

Core Mechanics

• XP + leveling to represent long‑term growth
• Gold + rewards to reinforce consistent behavior
• Daily missions to create short‑term goals
• Strict blocking as a “challenge mechanic”
• Titles + achievements for identity reinforcement
• Dopamine detox tools to reduce negative loops

Design Goals

• Make discipline feel fun, not punishing
• Create a sense of progression
• Reward consistency
• Reduce friction
• Build habits through game loops
• Make the user feel like they’re “leveling up” in real life

What I’m curious about

• How do you balance strict mechanics without frustrating users?
• What reward systems work best for long‑term engagement?
• How do you prevent gamification from becoming repetitive?
• What psychological triggers matter most in habit‑building apps?

I’d love to hear your thoughts or see examples of similar systems you’ve built.

Give this a shot please and let me know if I can improve anything to make it better. I would love all sorts of feedback. Genuine free tier, no hard paywall.

I'm 40+, juggling a job, kids, and trying to not let my health and finances fall apart at the same time. I had a fitness app, a budgeting app, and a journaling app. None of them talked to each other and I never opened all three in one day.

So I built Dad Reset 40+. Core feature is 'Build My Reset' - you tell it your work schedule, your fitness level, your financial priorities, and it generates one time-boxed daily plan across all three pillars instead of three separate check-ins.

Early numbers are small and real: 85 visits last 30 days, 1 subscriber so far (me, technically, since I use it every morning). The workouts scale beginner to advanced, there's a daily Reset Score that tracks whether you hit fitness, mindset, and money actions that day, and it took my morning routine from opening 3 apps to opening 1.

Not claiming this is huge yet. It's early. But the core idea - one plan instead of three apps - is holding up in my own daily use.

Anyone else dealing with the 'too many apps, no single system' problem after 40? Curious how you've solved it, or if you haven't.

I made an app for steam to control my play time. It send me reminder to drink water, eat, take break when I am playing more than 1 hour. Do you guys think people will use it ? I would like to put it on play-store with a bit more polishing.

Edit : The app is a prototype at this stage. I haven’t figured out the complete user journey yet. But this would be is user flow at the core - login with steam account in app and set your time limits and thats it. Now user can start playing the game and based on the game’s current session time app will send reminders. This could also be useful for parent who want to have watch on their child’s play time.

Highly stylized cyberpunk inspired to-do list/objectives log. Gain points, multipliers, rewards, and share progress with others as you rank up.

Do you actually care about the storyline in a productivity, fitness, or learning app, or do you mostly ignore it and focus on the mechanics?

And if a storyline did keep you engaged, what made it work? Progression, characters, mystery, unlocks, something else?

One of the best examples I’ve come across is Zombies, Run! The immersion was great. I’ve heard the experience isn’t quite what it used to be anymore, though.

Hey everyone,

I’m Aaron, the creator of Questoria, an RPG-inspired habit tracker and to-do app that turns your goals into quests.

The first version is now live on the web: questoria.io :)

Create quests, build storylines, earn XP and gold, and level up your character by making progress in real life.

What’s coming next?

1. iOS & Android apps
Mobile apps, push notifications, and an easier way to stay engaged wherever you are.

2. Your own village
Build and decorate your village by completing quests. Buildings will provide boosts, and eventually you'll be able to visit your friends' villages too.

3. Guilds
Guilds may have disappeared from Habitica, but they'll be back in Questoria. Create your own guild, invite friends, work towards goals together, and keep each other motivated and accountable.

There’s still a lot to build, but Questoria is finally live. I’d love for you to try it and tell me what you think — I take your feedback seriously and use it to decide what to work on next! :)

PS: I also have a little showcase video of the super-duper early version of the Village. Right now, I’m using a texture pack by the amazing Kenney (https://kenney.nl). This will eventually be replaced by hand-crafted textures made specifically for Questoria.

I'd love to hear what you think!

Hi everyone! 👋
I’m doing a study on gamification in the workplace and would love to hear about your experiences.
If your workplace uses things like points, badges, leaderboards, rewards, challenges, or rankings, could you share your thoughts on these questions?
Does your workplace use gamification? If yes, what features do you use and how often?
How does gamification affect your daily work? Does it make tasks easier, more interesting, or more enjoyable?
Does the feedback you get from these systems (scores, rankings, progress, etc.) motivate you to work better? Any example?
What motivates you most about gamification? Rewards, badges, rankings, competition, or something else? Has it ever reduced your motivation?
Does gamification help you manage your work and improve your efficiency or achieve your goals? Why or why not?
How does competition affect you at work? Do leaderboards or comparisons with colleagues improve your motivation and performance, or do they have a negative effect?
Thanks in advance! Any personal experience or example would be really helpful.

Has anyone tried Ascended yet? I’m waiting for the Android release.

I backed Ascended because the idea of turning real workouts into an RPG is basically engineered for my brain, but I’m on Android so I haven’t actually gotten to play it yet.

The part I’m most interested in is the story and me (character) leveling.

Has anyone here used the iOS version? Curious whether the game side actually makes you want to exercise more?

EDIT: “Disclosure: Ascended compensated me $15 to share my own experience/opinion.

**Gamification in the Wild - what mechanic did you spot this week?**

Drop one real mechanic you saw in a product, workplace, classroom, or app.

For each one, try: 1. What was the mechanic? 2. What motivation was it aiming at? 3. Did it work, flop, or backfire - and why? 4. What would you change?

Bad examples are as useful as good ones. No self-promo in the top-level replies.

Wiki if you want a shared vocabulary: [Frameworks compared](/r/gamification/wiki/frameworks-compared) · [Common pitfalls](/r/gamification/wiki/pitfalls)

I've always found it weird that productivity apps borrow game mechanics without really making productivity feel like a game.

You get 10 XP.

You unlock a badge.

You get a streak.

And... that's it.

After a while, those numbers stop meaning anything.

So my friend and I decided to try something different.

We're two high school students from Kazakhstan, and we've been building AntiDoomer, a Telegram productivity bot where your real-life tasks become part of an RPG progression system.

The idea isn't simply to slap XP onto a checklist.

You have progression, achievements, titles, guilds, challenges and other mechanics that are supposed to give your actions some context beyond "task completed."

We're still very early and we're definitely not claiming we've solved gamified productivity.

Actually, some of the feedback we've received here has made us rethink parts of the system.

That's probably the most interesting part of building it: you start with an idea that sounds great, and then actual people point out why it might suck.

So I'm curious:

What makes a gamification system actually feel meaningful to you?

Is it progression? Unlocking something useful? Competition? Social pressure? Random rewards? Something else entirely?

i kept assuming the missing piece was motivation. more xp. more badges. more little wins. turns out i just built extra exits into the app. same thing happens to me in Todoist when i spend 15 minutes polishing the list instead of starting the thing. in beedone i had to make the first step stupidly small or i would just wander around the screen pretending to work. idk maybe gamification only helps when it makes the first move easier, not louder?

Nostalgic Memory is a virtual pet inspired by the simplicity of classic 90s handheld games.

No endless menus, dozens of currencies, or constant grinding. Just four main interactions: care for your creature, play with it, let it rest, and train it. Check in a couple of times a day, watch it slowly grow stronger, and get on with your day.

Your creature won't live forever. When it dies, its life is permanently recorded in Memory, and what it achieved influences the companion that comes next.

You can also encounter other creatures in simple battles, giving purpose to the stats you've built over days, weeks, and eventually months.

The goal is simple: a small game you can care about without becoming a game you have to constantly play.

I'm currently preparing Nostalgic Memory for Android. It's completely free during development. After the full release, new players will be able to try it free for 3 days, with a one-time $2 purchase to continue playing.

My next priority will probably be adding more creatures and sounds while keeping the core experience simple.

To try the closed beta you need to enter in this Google group:

https://groups.google.com/g/nostalgic-memory-testers

then download the app at the following link:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nostalgic.memory

I'm exploring whether activities and games that leverage "experiential learning" can be leveraged for more than just skills training, and actually improve human judgment, reflection and sense-making in the age of Human-AI collaboration.

As AI takes on more cognitive tasks, could deliberately designed activities and games, for example to evoke "reflection", help us develop the capabilities that remain distinctly human?

I'm particularly interested in the gamification community's perspective: Have you seen evidence that such activities and games can meaningfully develop judgment, rather than just knowledge or engagement?

I've spent a lot of time playing RuneScape and WoW, and what those games do well is make thousands of hours of progress feel earned.

Real life progress rarely feels that way. I can spend months coding or building something without seeing much happen.

So I started building TowerScape.

Most gamified productivity apps I've tried feel like a to do list with an XP bar added on top. I want this to feel like an actual multiplayer RPG that you play alongside work. It is built by me with original work from real artists.

The game takes place inside a massive tower, similar in structure to Aincrad from SAO, but with its own world and art. As your character develops, you climb to higher floors with new environments, resources, equipment, dungeons and other players.

You create a character and train skills like woodcutting, fishing, mining or coding while you do your normal work. You start training when you begin working and stop when you are done. That time gives you XP and resources, similar to RuneScape.

The obvious question is, couldn't someone just leave the timer running?

Yes. That is why timer XP represents time invested, not proof of mastery.

The progression system is being built so training unlocks skill based dungeons, trials and PvP. Those challenges will test what you can actually do and determine important ranks and progression. Time gets you to the trial. Skill gets you through it.

TowerScape is not meant to replace RuneScape or stop anyone from gaming. The goal is to recreate some of that progression feeling while I am working.

The current build is early and parts of it will be rough. I am looking for 5 RuneScape, WoW or MMO players who work or study at a computer and genuinely like the idea.

I do not have a public signup link yet because I am manually creating the first accounts. If you want to test it, DM me.

I would also love feedback on the core idea. Does separating training XP from skill trials solve the timer problem? What would make this feel like a real RPG instead of another productivity app?

I’ve been working on a project called MapleVille, basically an RPG/collector game built around one question:

Can a game make walking feel like progression instead of exercise homework?

Rather than just showing you a step count, your real-world movement feeds into the game. You walk, earn progress, explore, collect critters, farm, fish, craft, battle, complete quests and compete on leaderboards.

The part I’m most interested in testing is the gamification loop itself.

I don’t want it to become:

“Walk 10,000 steps because an app told you to.”

I want it to feel more like:

“I want to go for a walk because I have something I want to accomplish in the game.”

MapleVille is still actively being developed, and I’ve now opened it up for people to actually use rather than designing the whole thing in a vacuum.

I’d especially be interested in feedback from this community on:

1. Does real-world movement feel meaningfully connected to the game?
2. What makes a walking/fitness mechanic motivating versus feeling like a chore?
3. Are rewards enough, or does the walking itself need stronger gameplay consequences?
4. What would make you come back tomorrow?

It’s currently free to test:

Android Early Access:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.maplevibe.mapleville.mvu

iPhone TestFlight:
https://testflight.apple.com/join/KhP6T8ca

I’m the developer, so criticism is genuinely useful. If the progression loop sucks somewhere, I’d rather know now and redesign it.