HabitRPG

HabitRPG has changed my life. Let me tell you about my life. Back before I started doing HabitRPG, I didn’t even have a life. I was arranging houseplants for a living. The job description said that I watered and arranged plants, but that wasn't true. I just arranged them. Mikey did all the watering. I had no friends, no ambitions. I had nothing. I had a crippling video game addiction and a rotating collection of free and discounted houseplants that I just kept drowning and replacing out of boredom and misdirected aggression.

That all changed the day I found HabitRPG. On that day, I knew that with enough incentivizing, I could do anything. I knew I’d found the tool I needed to turn my life around.

You see, I've had a controller in my hand since I was five years old. Success doesn't even make sense to me if it isn't represented in numeric form. If I can’t exchange it for gold coins or a longsword or a cactus I can ride around on, I have to wonder, is it even real? HabitRPG takes the world and redelivers it in sensical terms. It gives my mind something to look forward to while my body shambles around “improving”: exercising itself, teaching itself Spanish, writing in its journal, talking to strangers at the grocery store. I’m happy for my body. I really am. It’s wanted these things for so long. But deep down, I’m even happier for myself.

[pic]

Today, I am a level seven warrior. I wield an axe and ride an immense golden wolf. My pet black dragon keeps me company at all times. I am never lonely. I am never bored. I always have tasks. I always have goals. Every day there are dailies to be done, and when those are done there are penalties to administer and plus icons to be clicked. When I finish writing this review, I am going to have enough money to buy myself a buckler that will increase my Constitution by 3.

[ic]

Maybe that doesn't seem like much to you. Maybe you're right. But I want to tell you today that it’s a start. A better life is on the horizon.

I’m not saying HabitRPG is perfect. I’m not saying that there aren't features missing, that I don’t have questions. When, for example, will I be able to buy my avatar's haircuts in a store, with shopkeepers and spatial dimensions? When will I be able to hit something with this axe? Why must the experience be mediated by icons and menus? When will Habitica be a place that I can see and smell and touch? Why does my dragon look like a stuffed dinosaur? Will he look cooler if I keep feeding him? And speaking of food, why doesn't he like meat? What would you eat, if you were a dragon?

Wait, he only likes white food? Because he’s white? He looks closer to gray if you ask me.  4.5 / 5.