Review: The Habitica App Tricks You Into Being Productive

I consider myself a reasonably productive person, but I also really love being entertained by various distractions I term “treats.” For as much as I accomplish, I could probably do more if I weren’t also, say, watching baseball or playing mobile games at the same time. That’s why I like Habitica, a productivity app that is a mobile game: It gives me a treat, even as it pushes me to be more productive in the real world.

While I’m grinding through my real-life tasks, a little avatar version of me within the game is growing stronger, going on quests, and exploring a surprisingly vast digital landscape. As I level up, so does my avatar, earning points that I can cash in to spend on giving myself a break (maybe to watch some baseball). Available on iOS, Android, and your desktop, this clever app could help you get more done and have some fun while you’re at it.

Choose your self-improvement quest

My first concern for any new app is ease of setup—if I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to create an account, it’s already a dud for me. Habitica is very simple to set up. Within three minutes, I chose a username, customized my character, and started in. Character customization in the beginning is very limited: You pick a skin tone, a slim or bulky build, and a t-shirt and hair color, add accessories like glasses or a wheelchair, and that’s it. You’ll earn costumes and accessories as you play the game.

Once you’ve built your character, Habitica prompts you to choose the areas of your life you’d like to improve—work, school, health, exercise, etc.—and generates starter goals for you. After indicating I wanted to be more productive in the realms of work and exercise, my starter goals included “10 minutes of cardio” and “process emails.” Changing these goals and adding new ones is easy; it just requires tapping a plus sign on the top right of the screen.

There are three main categories of tasks, all of which correspond to real-life responsibilities:

• Habits, or things you want to do more consistently.

• Dailies, or structured checklists of what you want to do every day.

• To-dos, or one-time tasks that you need to take care of in the near term.

Under habits, I listed things like tidying up my apartment and completing my morning and night skincare routines. Under dailies, I listed lifting or pilates, cardio, and nutrition tracking under my exercise plan, and emails and deadlines under my work plan. I slotted in my real to-dos for today–bringing my Poshmark sales to the post office, building a shoe rack—and finished the setup.

By marking off when you complete your habits, dailies, and to-dos, you earn gold, which is the in-game currency that allows you to buy your upgrades like armor, weapons, and potions, which you will then use as your avatar completes quests. I haven’t played Runescape since the fifth grade, but it felt kinda like that.

You don’t actually control the character on these quests, they just sort of happen in the background—sometimes your health will go down due to an enemy encounter, but you don’t actually fight the enemies off yourself. Which is good, I suppose, since playing a game is not exactly going to make you more productive.

A minor learning curve

I was initially confused about the difference between habits and dailies, but I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t really matter—since you’re entering the tasks yourself, you can use it in a way that makes sense to you.

You have options when you create those prompts to indicate whether they’re easy or difficult, and how often you want to do them. Your avatar earns more experience points for the completion of harder tasks, which helps you level up more quickly. Once I figured that out, I was able to customize my habits, dailies, and to-dos to earn more experience and gold, and purchase better items for my warrior, like a new sword.

You can also use your gold to “buy” yourself real-world rewards. It cost me one piece of gold to watch today’s baseball game. (Obviously you’re on the honor system here.)

You’ve got to buy in

I was annoyed when I realized tapping the “watch baseball” button I created for myself under the “rewards” tab actually deducted gold from my balance, and immediately thought, “Well, I won’t press that next time.” That, of course, is not how the game is supposed to work. You’re supposed to tell it the truth, and earn your rewards or consequences accordingly.

It is easy to lie and check off all your habits and to-dos (and fail to report your bad habits or treats, which deduct gold from your balance), but that’s defeating the purpose of the app. There are loads of games on the market that allow you to play for fun without putting in any effort at improving yourself, so if you don’t want to use Habitica to track and change your habits, download something else. It’s only worthwhile if you actually commit to leveling up yourself alongside your little guy.

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson

Updates come slowly

It’s pretty clear that the longer you play, the longer your habit streaks are, and the more time and effort you put in, the better you do. There are levels, classes, and achievements you can only earn over time. I wanted to get a sense of how long-term users feel about the game, so I checked Reddit, where the primary complaint is that the rollout of new quests and items can be slow.

Indeed, in the in-game shop, I noted the selection of new hair colors will switch over in 78 days. That means that from today, April 3, through the end of June, I can only buy yellow, pink, blue, purple, or rainbow hair. That’s definitely a long time to wait if you’ve already collected all of those.

It’s free, but some features cost money

Just as Habitica gives you in-game rewards and real-life rewards, it can drain of you of in-game currency and real money. I progressed nicely with the free version, leveling up consistently and earning gear and points for my avatar, but if you want all the features, you have to pony up.

There are two currencies in the game—the gold you earn by checking off tasks and completing quests, and gems, which you can just buy with actual money. Gems get you rare items, additional hair and shirt colors, potions for hatching eggs, and cool backgrounds for your avatar, among other things. None of this is necessary, but if you end up taking the game seriously, don’t be surprised if you find yourself pulling out your credit card—four gems cost $0.99, 21 cost $4.99, 42 cost $9.99, and 84 cost $19.99. Most items in the market cost two to four gems.

You can also become a subscriber, which gets you more benefits (and also more gems). For $4.99 per month, you get 24 gems, plus two additional gems for every month you stay subscribed. If you pay $47.99 upfront for a full year, you get 50 gems per month. Either way, you’ll also unlock the ability to buy gems with gold, access limited monthly drops of gear for your avatar, gain instant healing powers if you run out of HP, and access rare items like certain potions.