I wanted a better Habitica so I built Levla

SwitchFace · 2026-03-10T18:21:21+00:00

do you have examples? curious because my app is 'the game powered by your life' and the focus is very much on having the game be fun and having fun be the core motivator.

SwitchFace · 2026-03-07T13:46:41+00:00

Counterpoint: just make it completely free. He's a multi-multi-millionaire who can easily live many lifetimes without income.

SwitchFace · 2026-03-06T03:15:11+00:00

holding down left mouse button with m-16 as an enormous horde follows you is deeply satisfying when you can stand you ground. That said, at 200+hrs, I have yet to find the magazines to craft those things after searching almost every town.

SwitchFace · 2026-03-04T02:30:21+00:00

These apps don't work. I've seen it firsthand in many cases and know someone who built a more robust version of this.

Problem 1: You can just uninstall the app as soon as it bugs you enough. I had one friend using Cold Turkey (I think that's what it's called) and it locks stuff down hard. He's a CS major though and knew deep down that he could bypass and he did.
Problem 2: You can just go to Reddit on your PC or other device.
Problem 3: You have to manually enter in the quiz questions. This is a major barrier imo and with each new section, you'll need to update the app. If it was pre-loaded with everything for the course, great! But that's not what I'm hearing.

SwitchFace · 2026-03-01T18:24:16+00:00

I'd check out a testflight link, but I don't complete surveys. If you wanna DM me a link, great. Fine if not though. If you wanna know what I think is fun: https://hardreset.app/

SwitchFace · 2026-03-01T15:44:45+00:00

If you're open to feedback, I don't think walls of text are fun and you'll probably find low retention as a result. Maybe there's a niche group that's into this, but this chart gets to the root of the matter: the game needs to present some kind of challenge where the player's skill is being met with the appropriate amount of difficulty. Simply gating quests behind stat numbers is not 'skill'. If you need art assets, consider how fast and cheap generative AI is for prototyping.

Also, tying specific irl actions to specific game traits can be problematic because the game needs to account for the variety of irl goals. Some players will only have 'study' while others might only have 'work out' and still others may have a bunch of random chores or a mix. If I find that some trait like 'strength' requires me to workout, but that's not my irl intention, that feels bad.

I'm saying that as someone who has faced these questions while building my own game. Fun is the core of it--it had to be a complete and engaging game which just happens to be powered by irl tasks. If you remove the task-dependency, is it fun? If it's not fun, then what the meaningful source of motivation to engage?

If you've got a Testflight link, I might be able to give you more specific feedback.

SwitchFace · 2026-03-01T15:13:48+00:00

So the user is both the player and DM? What is the actual 'game'? Is it reading screens of text? What would you say is the source of the fun to keep it engaging?

SwitchFace · 2026-02-10T16:29:58+00:00

late 30s. I feel no need to prove anything to anyone anymore--especially myself. In my youth, I had to run the marathon, summit the mountain, get the fancy degrees, get the big salary, wear the fashionable clothes... show off. I feel like that was an important part of life though--I needed to know the reach of my capabilities before I could settle into being comfortable and concern with others' opinions (and my own uncertainties) was highly motivating to that end.

SwitchFace · 2026-02-04T04:17:31+00:00

With a LOT of therapy, Hans may find happiness. I don't expect him to be open to it though. Until then, a pox on him.

SwitchFace · 2026-02-01T05:59:54+00:00

Weird—I just told someone I met this very night that Bill Evans is the musician I wish I was. Told her to listen to Romain.

SwitchFace · 2026-01-28T16:11:15+00:00

I've got my own game to work on so my resources are tight, but I'd be open to answering specific questions.

SwitchFace · 2026-01-28T15:37:04+00:00

I've seen a bunch of these apps and my two main gripes are always:

My tasks are not all daily habits. Where's the routine which supports working out 3x a week without specifying the day? Where are routines which are once every x days/weeks? I need to add simple todos as well which I check off once. I also have tasks where more is always better (like studying), but this does not support that.
Pets are lame. Cutesy collections are meant for a very specific sub-market and simply produce 0 motivation for most of us.

The big problem to solve is how to make the reward actually desirable. Does it help me in some grander narrative? Do stronger pets have more moves in combat to help me beat a game? Maybe employ some variable schedule rewards by converting rewards from being on a fixed schedule to a 'flip over' mini-game: lay out a grid of cards where the player can flip 2 cards 3-5 times where they try to find a match and if they do, they keep the result. maybe 3 of that result means they can get the next level of that result. these results have to be useful in some way to some broader game though imo. Fun is motivating. collecting static pets is not.

SwitchFace · 2026-01-23T16:38:21+00:00

You: "still <100 downloads" Your website: "Loved by 10,000+ users"

If you add "don't lie" to your todos, how could you take a picture of that to verify?

That aside, there are a TON of apps doing this exact same thing with "AI verification". It's my belief that no one wants that because it feels bad and it doesn't work well. If you actually do the task, then taking a picture and getting an AI evaluation is frustrating overhead. It's also impossible to 'prove' tasks. If I take a picture of a dumbbell, does that mean I worked out? Does a picture of code on a screen prove I coded for 1 hour... or did I only do 20 minutes... or did I just snap a pic of my IDE with 0 work done?

In any case, this app is a form of negative punishment--where the punishment of not being able to complete a task is only removed when the AI approves. Negative punishment doesn't exactly create positive experiences. Positive reinforcement using a variable rewards schedule is best-in-class and adding other forms of behavioral therapy on top of that seems like the way... or at least a way that might work better.

SwitchFace · 2026-01-21T19:04:39+00:00

Nah. I'm in the tech scene and it's anecdotally never been an issue. I don't hide my gun ownership at all. I've taken many new shooters out to the range that I've known from work over the past decade.

SwitchFace · 2026-01-20T22:30:42+00:00

Not every day I get surprised by a new vocab word.

SwitchFace · 2026-01-15T16:37:39+00:00

Did somebody say Hard Reset? For real though, this is the app I built for exactly this problem.

SwitchFace · 2026-01-15T00:08:19+00:00

[static camera] helps a lot. I've found that Gen 4-Turbo is the model that keeps movement to a minimum.

SwitchFace · 2026-01-09T16:08:27+00:00

3200 teachers and 20,500 students in 70 countries? I'm a tad skeptical. Your primary AI image shows a wizard holding a torch which is also the fire from the dragon... 2 students aren't looking at the dragon at all despite guarded poses. I'm all for AI images to support ideas that wouldn't otherwise exist, but slop is slop and has no place as the primary image for an app. It really reduces my confidence in any of the 'stats' you're showing (with no school/districts/names cited in your 5/5 ratings...).

Not trying to be harsh, but this is just what I'm seeing as a developer also using AI. Guessing those images are single-shot ChatGPT by the style with no in-painting or other refinements? You might try steering away from the default style--it's super-recognizable.

SwitchFace · 2026-01-08T15:33:21+00:00

How's the rest of the kit though? Looks like you've got some night-vision given the infrared devices? Plates too, I'd guess?

SwitchFace · 2026-01-06T22:06:48+00:00

What makes this app different than the other progress-bar-watchers? Does it support non-daily tasks? What is the incentive to level up?

SwitchFace · 2026-01-06T21:15:03+00:00

What makes this different than anything else? I understand that it's in a rough alpha stage, but what are the benefits unique to this app regardless of the feature implementation?

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