Turn your life into a game!

Does it bother you that you're never motivated to clean your room, do your homework, or take your dog for a walk? If not, then you might be bothered by your parents who complain that you're not doing these things. That's where Habitica comes to help you. A site and mobile app that tries to motivate you in getting things done in an RPG-like manner.

So what exactly is Habitica, and how does it work? Basically, you create an avatar, who will represent your progress. Then you create task lists for yourself, one for Dailies, one for Habits, and one for To-Do's. Dailies are tasks you wish to complete once every day, week, month, or multiple times on specific days or once every so many days, weeks, or months. Habits are split up in two groups: good and bad Habits. In this list, you'll put all the good habits you wish to take over, and all the bad habits you want to get rid off. The To-do's are big tasks that you have to complete only once, like finishing a big assignment for work or school.

By completing Dailies, To-Do's and good Habits, you get rewarded with experience points, gold, mana once you reach level 10 and pick a class, and eggs to hatch pets and food to feed them. Not finishing Dailies in time or falling into bad habits, will punish you by lowering your avatar's health points and mana once unlocked. Like any RPG, when you have enough experience points, you will level up, healing your avatar and giving it attribute points to make them stronger. Mana can be used for skills, which will help you and/or your party. And gold can be used to buy things, like health potions, new gear, and quests. You can also create your own rewards, so you can have a reward where you can play video games for 1 hour, at a price of 20 gold. This means that you cannot play video games until you buy this reward. You can change the price of each reward you create to any amount you find reasonable.



When you're in a party, you can go on quests, where you as a group must collect a certain amount of items, or kill a monster. To deal damage, you have to complete Dailies and good habits. But be careful, because for every daily you miss, your entire party takes more damage. This gives you a sense of responsibilty, as you might not care for your own death, but you don't to let everyone think you're a couch potato. If you're not taking responsibility, the party leader may eventually kick you from the group, so make sure you do your tasks.

You can also join many guilds and be a member of as many of them as you like. These guilds are a group of random people who all share a common interest, talk about it and help others when they need help with a specific question. Let's say you have a guild for Artists. People can show off their art, ask for tips and share them, learn and discover other forms of art, and much more. Guilds won't reward you with any in-game rewards, but the different communities can help you if you ever need help with a specific task, or futher expand your task list so you can be more productive every day.

Cheating



One of the biggest problems with Habitica though, is cheating. The game doesn't come with a supervisor or private detective who follows you 24/7 and verifies that you've actually did what you clicked off of your task list. There is even a built in tool that allows you to change your avatar's level to 1000. This tool exists for other purposes, like unfair loss of gold, health, mana or levels, but can be used for other reasonable actions, aside from cheating.

The only one who can stop you from cheating, is yourself. Nobody is going to be impressed by someone who's at a super high level. It also doesn't matter that much, because you won't get any more attribute points after level 100. The only people you can impress, are those close to you, who will be amazed at how productive you've become. But that is something you can't cheat with.

There will be days that you're in no mood to do anything or when you're sick or on a holiday. There's no need to cheat though, as the game gives you the option to sleep at the Inn. You simply press the button and you will not take damage from your Dailies as long as you're in there. You can still do your tasks and be rewarded from them. Keep in mind that if you're in a party and still on a monster quest, that you can still take damage when party members aren't completing their Dailies.

Conclusion

So Habitica helps you with setting good routines, gaining positive habits, learning off the bad ones, and getting things done in your every day life. The community is big, helpful and very friendly. Even if you don't want to improve your every day life, you can still use it for all the things that do matter to you. 

Let's say we want to use Habitica for Gamehag. You can make Dailies like "Earn 100 Soul Gems from tasks today" and "Level up this week", and create To-Do's where you try to reach a certain amount of Soul Gems. You could also make good habits for earning Soul Gems from minigames or inviting friends to Gamehag.

Use Habitica however you see fit and enjoy a more productive life!