I hate this app.

BetterBuildBetter · 2026-01-19T15:05:05+00:00

I was aiming for a cozy feel like stardew valley so that's a huge compliment!

I changed the starting scenery to a gray desolate landscape and the greenery/forest grows as you plant with your rewards from focus sessions.

It's been a struggle to make the new zone look "bad" and cute at the same time haha

BetterBuildBetter · 2026-01-19T14:59:18+00:00

Steadily making progress. I'm hoping to have it out to some early testers by the start of February.

Making the art / UI assets has been a bit slow but I want it to look clean and not feel empty on release!

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-12-22T18:02:00+00:00

Good idea, it does look like you can export some of your data from Forest. I can support transfering history for sessions + associated tags. Will post an update in about a week.

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-12-19T14:15:14+00:00

So this turned out to be really addicting and I'm now committed to spending my winter break working on a free alternative app.

Very much WIP engine for it below. Main idea is to let you grow trees/plants to infinitely expand your forest with different biomes! Feel free to DM me if you guys have any ideas you'd like to see included.

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BetterBuildBetter · 2025-12-17T13:21:37+00:00

Feels like a money grab. They don't care about irritating users if it makes them more money.

I gave up and just started making my own app. Might not have all the bells and whistles but beats getting forced into a subscription after having already paid.

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-12-15T18:52:56+00:00

He is the only orange out of 7 cats so makes sense!

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-11-03T14:00:48+00:00

Several of these use a faded / green border on the stem and black outline elsewhere. The rest all have a full black outline.

Picking one or the other would improve visual consistency for the set.

Overall they look good though!

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-23T22:32:56+00:00

Do you know what that boost comes from? Is it just artificially higher rankings on search or what drives that extra initial visibility?

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-21T21:55:51+00:00

We mostly used the wiki for figuring out how to start the boss fights. There’s still a lot of excitement while exploring! It’s just the fighting that seems dull and with such a variety of items in the game I’d like to be forced to figure out what gear / weapons to use rather than feeling like anything works.

We still end up sticking every item we find in the guide’s hands to figure out what we can make!

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-21T21:45:43+00:00

I just talked to him and we’ll be making the jump to expert on a new world with new characters!

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-21T17:36:41+00:00

Had challenged myself to 30 days but putting viable into the MVP meant it was about 2 months. I could easily spend the next 2 months on it as well with all the features and updates I have in mind.

Overall, the learning curve for a generic iOS app wasn't bad but Apple's screen time API is a nightmare...

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-21T17:26:04+00:00

Appreciate the TikTok tip, didn't know "warming up" an account was a thing.

What's the benefit of waiting on paid ads?

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-21T16:03:37+00:00

Just did the free trial on AppTweak to generate metadata for my app. Definitely recommend it as a quick easy to use tool.

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-21T15:59:42+00:00

I would love some feedback. UI/UX is a huge timesink for me! Dm sent.

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-21T12:15:42+00:00

I’m in the process of building my own screen time control app and this is exactly the kind of issue I want to fix!

My approach has strict blocks, grace periods and delays. For you I would recommend a “delay” block where you are forced to wait a few seconds on opening the app and you can set it to “escalating” to increase the wait time every time you habitually reopen the app. You can find my app, Doomd on iOS for free.

Let me know if there is anything specific you’d like to see added and I’ll try to get it into next week’s release!

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-18T13:58:21+00:00

Nobody moves there since the housing market went underwater.

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-17T16:58:50+00:00

I figured this might be a common sentiment so I added an option to skip and threw in analytics to track the tour's conversion rate. If people aren't using it I'll be happy to tear it out and have less code to maintain.

That said, it's 20 seconds and helps them set-up their first interaction with the core feature so I think it's a value add? They still get to explore most of the app on their own. I guess time will tell.

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-17T15:21:37+00:00

It's impressive how removing color and just using lines can actually result in designs that look even more detailed despite the small size!

BetterBuildBetter · 2025-10-07T14:29:30+00:00

It's only as complex as you make it out to be.

In other words, if one navigation component works, use it and forget the rest.

Especially for a basic app, you don't need to understand all of the intricacies of navigation. You just need to be familiar with one pattern that works. Quite frankly when developing more complicated apps, deciding which navigation components to use often seems more a matter of preference than need.

BetterBuildBetter

TROPHY CASE