HabitRPG Experience

Have you ever tried to set a goal only to find yourself abandoning it in progress? I'm sure many of you have done it and I'm one of them. Today, I will talk about a slightly funner way to keep track of your goals and daily routines. It is called HabitRPG, a way to "gamify" your life!

Without going too deep into its origin and history, HabitRPG started off as a Kickstarter project with the aim to make habit setting fun and social. For a retro gamer like me, a RPG game seemed like a great idea to get myself into shape. The way it works is you have to hold yourself accountable for completing daily tasks while your peers reinforce your resolve to get things done.

The main screen for your character

On your account's main screen, you are greeted by your character's avatar and the lists of things that require your attention. As of now, HabitRPG divide the tasks into your Habits, Dailies, and To-Dos. Like many RPG games, the basic elements are the same, except most of the drama revolves around whether or not you stick to your routines. I'm not going to explain the basics behind a RPG game, so I'm going to assume everyone knows what it is and summarize the general features of HabitRPG.

Health: or HP; in this game, you lose health whenever you leave one of the Dailies unchecked. When your HP reaches zero, your character "dies" and you lose a level plus a piece of equipment.
Experience: shows how much XP before you gain a level.
Mana: or MP; they are used for using certain class-specific skills which could aid you or your party (if you are in one) to gain bonuses or reduce penalties when performing tasks.

Habits: these are things you do regularly. They can be of good influence, or bad, depending on how you set them up. I put something I do weekly or more than several times a day in this category.
Dailies: these are things you need to do everyday (or multiple times a week depending on your settings). Failure to do so will result in your character taking damage.
To-Dos: you know how you mark your calendars? Yeah, it's similar in idea. There's generally no time limit for this category unless you desire so.
Rewards: whenever you complete a task, you gain not only experience, but also gold and silver. These are useful to buy equipment unique to your character class and healing potions to recover from damage. You may also set up rewards yourself that cost gold for your own good behavior. I have yet to set this up since I haven't put too much attention into what I treat myself with when I've been good. Sad, I know...

You could adjust the difficulties and categories of each task according to your desire. Difficulties will affect the reward and damage potential. Categories are more for accounting purposes and for more seasoned players to develop their habits/characters in certain fashions.

You can join parties or guilds

Of course, tackling bad habits by yourself is a huge challenge. The game has also implemented party and guild systems to help people be more accountable for their actions. Peer pressure, though viewed negatively in most cases, can actually be beneficial when the said peers are pressuring you to become a better person.

Party: a classic RPG idea. You can live or die with the members of your group. Things you can do with party members include quests, challenges, and a message board. Nothing gets your teammates more riled up than having everyone take damage during a quest because you couldn't get your Dailies done each day.
Guilds: another constant in many RPGs. These are groups of people with similar goals that they are working on or distinct demographics with similar lifestyles and circumstances. They often host challenges while serving as a forum to like-minded individuals for social and self-improvement reasons.

I'm not in a guild at the moment, but certainly a member of a party of friends.

Modify your character!

Aside from the main purpose of HabitRPG, it offers fun little gimmicks to make your gamified experience more bearable. You can change how your avatar look as well as your settings for character development, etc. You also have achievements, pets/mounts to collect, among other things. Some things require gems, which are special currencies bought with real money. For a $5.00 donation, you receive 20 gems. Guilds often offer gems as rewards for completing a challenge.

HabitRPG is still in beta at this time as it is constantly evolving. More updates and features will come in the future. The staff has encouraged users to contribute either monetarily or contents to help improve the experience. You will be compensated for your time and effort, but it is not mandatory.

It is easy to cheat in this game because it expects users to be honest and accountable for themselves. For me, I don't see the point in cheating in HabitRPG because you'd be wasting your time. In addition, you are not improving yourself, but creating an illusion of someone staying on top of things.

Currently, HabitRPG can be accessed via web and smartphones. Smartphone apps tend to lag behind in updates compared to the web version. Be aware! I use both the web and iPhone version of this game.

I like HabitRPG because it helps me a way to keep track of 95% of the things I need to be doing and eventually develop good habits out of them. I highly recommend it to folks who has some sort completionist, or even OCD, when it comes to games. If you can put that drive into something useful like this, you can most definitely become a better person in time.

What are you waiting for? Go explore at https://habitrpg.com