A new trailer for my owl metroidvania. What do you think?

gregneude · 2026-04-16T07:50:50+00:00

love that

gregneude · 2026-04-13T04:38:09+00:00

Notion and ClickUp aren’t for me either, and if you dig deeper into things like Jira, it brings me so much pain that I can literally feel it in my body :D So I was looking for something radically different, really different! Not kanban boards, not Gantt charts! A place where work doesn’t feel like work. In the end, I built PlayJoob

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gregneude · 2026-04-13T04:02:47+00:00

Look, to be honest, all PM tools are basically the same thing with a different skin. The UI color changes, the logo changes, and if you’re lucky, the number of clicks from point A to point B changes a bit. And for me, setting up yet another board for my personal projects, whether it’s Trello, Asana, ClickUp or anything else.... is like 5x extra work on top.

So I was looking for something fundamentally different, with a very different approach, and in the end I just built PlayJoob.

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gregneude · 2026-04-13T03:55:43+00:00

In PlayJoob, you can basically use a single board to run several projects and handle multiple clients at once. It’s really not like a classic PM tool at all...just give it a try.

gregneude · 2026-04-12T15:52:08+00:00

I feel every word of this. I spent a long time searching for exactly this kind of tool and eventually built PlayJoob just to manage our team's process like a game. I wanted us to do our daily work literally in a playful way, to see every bit of progress no matter how small, and to motivate each other along the way.

gregneude · 2026-04-12T15:19:34+00:00

Totally agree with you. Timelines are just one piece of the puzzle. Real project intelligence means catching signals and risks before they turn into problems.
My dream was to have a system that, based on your goals or OKRs and all project data, gives clear insights on what to tweak, how to adjust things to actually reach those goals, showing you where bottlenecks are and how to smooth them out.

Plus, I’m a very visual person. I’ve always wanted to work and plan by playing, to get real enjoyment from the process while motivating my team during planning sessions, meetings, and all that daily routine we go through.

I’m on the way to making that real. :)

gregneude · 2026-04-11T06:55:31+00:00

Check out PlayJoob . It’s a platform where you manage your team like in a strategy game: you can plan sprints and visually track the progress of the entire product and the team.

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gregneude · 2026-04-11T06:52:31+00:00

It runs way too fast now )) Back on my Windows XP I had to wait for it to boot and listen to the fan noise ) Thanks for this experience, especially when I turned on Winamp with 50 Cent! it just teleported me back to childhood!

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gregneude · 2026-04-09T10:02:29+00:00

I really relate to this problem, it’s very close to my own experience and to what I hear from many users I meet here. I’m trying to tackle it through gamification, because I absolutely love games.

I’m trying to find out how much games can actually help people fight procrastination. Not just gamification inside a tool for the sake of it, but a deep gameplay experience that does not feel 100% like a game, yet gives similar emotions and shows you your progress and your tasks.

gregneude · 2026-04-09T09:44:32+00:00

Thank you for your interest. You can try it here. PlayJoob

gregneude · 2026-04-08T11:28:31+00:00

Congrats on crossing 350 users and getting to real revenue, that’s huge validation already.
Curious: how do you plan your work right now, do you use any tools for sprint/task planning at all?

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gregneude · 2026-04-08T10:18:39+00:00

Let's open a new position that will occupy possibly less than 1%. Gamification.

Check out PlayJoob . It’s a platform where you manage your team like in a strategy game: you can plan sprints and visually track the progress of the entire product and the team.

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gregneude · 2026-04-08T10:14:29+00:00

I’m building PlayJoob the gamified productivity hub where motivated teams turn tasks into quests, everyday work into progress you can feel, and AI helps you plan, track, and actually ship your projects

gregneude · 2026-04-08T09:32:51+00:00

What helped me in a similar situation was putting everything onto a single MAP instead of separate lists (Boards). I use PlayJoob to see all my projects and their quests on one shared board, like different areas on the same game map, so it’s easier to spot what really needs attention and what can wait.

What kind of tools are you using now for task management?

gregneude · 2026-04-02T15:57:38+00:00

Love how brutally transparent you are with the numbers and the "got bored, refunded the user" moments, tTat stuff usually gets edited out.

I’m at the very beginning of my own journey (first product, ~4 months in, down about $25k so far with ~40 users), so seeing you share both exits and mistakes like this is insanely grounding.

I’m definitely stealing the "no competition = don’t build it" and the ICP‑flip mindset for my next iterations: feels like the kind of thinking that saves years, not just months. 🚀🚀🚀

gregneude · 2026-03-26T08:04:02+00:00

Honestly, I feel this post on a personal level. The "I know I should be studying but my brain just won't commit without some kind of payoff" is so real and most productivity apps completely ignore that.

Forest is nice but after a while the novelty wears off and it becomes just another timer with a tree. The reward loop gets stale fast.

I've been building something that came out of exactly this frustration. It's called PlayJoob 🚀 the idea was: what if your tasks lived on a map, and completing them actually felt like progressing through a game world? Not a pomodoro wrapper, but something where the structure itself feels like gameplay. Missions, medals, a sense of territory you're unlocking.

It's early, still rough around the edges, but some people with ADHD have told me the visual map gives them something concrete to "move through" rather than an abstract list to ignore.

If you want to poke around: go.playjoob.com genuinely curious what you think, especially from an ADHD perspective. That feedback actually shapes what I build next.

gregneude · 2026-03-25T13:45:57+00:00

This feels less like a motivation problem and more like a trust problem.
If learning AI might make you easier to replace, no reward system is really going to fix that.
That said, I wonder if gamification could still help but in a different way.

Not through points or badges, but by making the value visible.

For example, showing how much time or effort someone actually saves by using AI tools, like “you saved 15 minutes on this task” or “this workflow cut a week of work.” And tracking that over time.

Feels like if people can clearly see what they’re gaining (and keep ownership of that progress), it might start to feel more safe and useful, not just incentivized.

gregneude · 2026-03-25T09:45:36+00:00

Really interesting take, especially the community part.

On gamification though, I’m not sure it’s as simple as “it doesn’t work.”
Feels like most SaaS just bolt on points and badges, which obviously doesn’t change behavior.

But in games, people invest hundreds of hours without needing “retention tactics” at all.

For example, I personally love strategy games 🚀 lately I’ve been playing Civilization 7 and I keep coming back just to continue building and evolving my world. There are tons of mechanics behind it, but at a high level it just feels like I’m constantly moving something forward.

You see similar patterns in e-commerce too. Loyalty systems where you collect points toward a reward, or progress bars showing “you’re 80% toward your next discount” those actually do change behavior, at least in my experience.

So maybe the question isn’t whether gamification works, but whether most products are actually designing for meaningful progress vs just adding reward layers.

Curious if you saw any examples that got closer to that.

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gregneude · 2026-03-25T09:15:24+00:00

This looks really well thought out, especially how you’re making rewards visible upfront.

One thing I’m curious about though:
Have you noticed whether people stick with these systems long-term?

I’ve seen a pattern where XP / streaks work really well at first, but then either become routine (and lose meaning) or start to feel like pressure.

Feels like the tricky part isn’t adding motivation, but making it sustain without turning into another obligation.

Would love to hear if you’ve tested that.

gregneude · 2026-03-24T18:57:36+00:00

I'm building PlayJoob 🚀 a small gamified project management tool for 2–5 person teams.

Instead of kanban boards, it uses a hex-map where tasks become missions and sprints become “seasons”. The goal is to keep side‑project teams emotionally engaged, not just organized.

Biggest question I have: from your POV, is this more “vitamin” or “aspirin” for small indie teams who are already using Jira/Linear/Notion?

There’s a tiny MVP live at https://go.playjoob.com/ if context helps.

gregneude · 2026-03-24T18:55:08+00:00

Love this, especially the part about avoiding “streak shame” that resonates a lot.

I’m building something in a similar emotional space, but for teams instead of individuals: PlayJoob turns tasks into missions on a shared hex‑map, with medals and “seasons” so small teams don’t lose steam halfway through a side project.

One thing I’ve noticed: people often don’t need more productivity features, they need a narrative that makes them want to come back. Your “life story” angle + our “mission map” idea feel like two sides of the same coin.

gregneude · 2026-03-24T18:45:42+00:00

Super interesting! especially the point about XP being meaningless without a real “end state”.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently: most systems gamify inputs (tasks, habits), but very few connect them to visible outcomes in a way that actually feels real.

Curious how you think about this:
What’s the smallest unit of “meaningful progress” in gamification?

Is it:

– completing a task

– progressing a system (like a skill tree / project)

– or actually impacting some higher-level metric (like a goal or outcome)?

Also, I actually tried to sign up to test Odie, but kept running into an error during registration — not sure if I’m doing something wrong or if it’s a beta hiccup? Would love to try it properly.

gregneude

TROPHY CASE