Rambling Review: Habitica the TODO-list RPG

by Luke McCullough · August 12, 2016

Gamification has been a big buzz word for a bit now. The solution to everything, everything tech related at least, was to gamify it. Gamification, for those who don’t follow tech trends like most people follow sports teams, is the idea of applying game rewards to things that are essentially not games. Doing it wrong is when your an app all of sudden started giving you “achievements”, even though it is a parking or food ordering app. Better examples are the Fitbit app, or Habitica.

Habitica takes gamification to a whole new level. It is not just adding in some cute achievements to a TODO-list app, which it does, but it makes doing your tasks into a full on RPG. Currently I am a 5th Level Warrior and have both a panda and cactus pet. And the game parts are pretty good, with all the hallmarks of a modern free-to-play app, including cosmetic gear to buy.

The game parts are cute, and compelling in an app sort of way, but where Habitica beats the socks off most of the other gamification apps is that it is wrapped around a best in class app. At its core Habitica tracks three types of tasks: Habits you are trying to build, Dailies that you are trying to do every day, and one off TODO-list style items. You get “damaged” for not hitting your dailies and overdue TODO-list items, and you get bonuses for completing habits, dailies, and TODOs.

One of the best parts is that the different types of items are separate, instead of trying to have a one size fits all type of item, each one is tracked separately and the app benefits for this.

I have a few quibbles, weekly tasks are not as easy to set up as dailies and a lack of shared tasks being the main two, but this is now my goto for tasks and tracking I love the app and website, and the RPG bits are fun. (It also has ‘Quests’ which I have not explored yet, but they look like ways of being social while working on your tasks.)

Links

Habitica

Luke McCullough

Luke was born in a small town in western OR, and by the time he graduated high school had moved around enough to never feel like his identity was tied to anyone place. After college in PA, he worked a for a big company outside Seattle, WA doing small parts of interesting projects. And now is employed doing interesting things for a smaller company based in NY, NY. He currently lives in Arlington, MA. Reading and writing have been a passion his entire life, though it has only been more recently that writing has been a focus for him.

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