It took one person who saw HabitRPG on tumblr for it to sweep through my local community. I joined up too and was surprised by how much it has affected my everyday life — no power on earth has ever gotten me to floss twice a day before.

After a month of consistently using the app, I found I was happier and healthier because of my positive lifestyle changes. How was this possible?

Welcome to the World of Habitica

HabitRPG is half self-improvement tracker, half role-playing adventure. Once you create your “Habitican” avatar, you receive experience and gold for your accomplishments, and lose health for bad habits and uncompleted daily tasks.

Your measure of self-improvement is divided into positive and negative habits, daily tasks (called dailies), and a to-do list. You can even assign these checklists a difficulty level; the more challenging it is, the more gold you can earn, or the more damage you take from neglect. Tasks change color according to whether they’ve been neglected or accomplished; older to-do items are worth more experience, motivating Habiticans to do tasks they’ve been putting off.

When your experience bar is full, you level up. The more you play, the more you can customize your Habitican with different class systems and attribute points. For every accomplishment, you receive gold you can spend on the rewards menu. You have the choice between a digital prize of gear to beef up your avatar’s stats, or a customized “real world” reward such as 20 gold = one hour of TV.

“I was skeptical at first, but it’s amazing how much a digital gold piece can motivate you to write a postcard, study, or do the dishes.” — Charles Fliss, level 21 warrior

To get the full HabitRPG experience, you need to log in to their website from a computer. Here you can create a party, chat in a guild, and feed your hatched pets. If you don’t want to wait for a random prize drop, you can also fork over some real gold for in-game purchases of quests, eggs, and shop items.

Fighting the Dragon Together

When I interviewed several people about the effect HabitRPG has had on their daily life, I heard similar stories of initial skepticism, followed by dedicated use and transformation.

Aside from the initial excitement of turning their lives into a real roleplaying game, the first question was often, “How can the app know when you’ve done your dailies or not?”

The answer is, it doesn’t. Big Brother isn’t watching over your shoulder, admonishing you for checking “clean the toilet” off your to-do list when you didn’t. You can easily level up without any actual work, but then there’s nothing about the game to hold your interest. The whole point is to make progress towards positive lifestyle changes in your real life.

“I’m in recovery for depression and generalized anxiety disorder, and when I notice myself falling into old, unhealthy behaviors I’ll lose some HP. It’s a tool for me to develop a more positive attitude.” — Dani Lediard, level 16 mage

HabitRPG is rooted in accountability, and that’s where your party members come in. Just like in a traditional multiplayer video game, you can form a party of close friends to go on quests together. During a quest, your completed dailies turn into attack points against a boss. In turn, they can deal damage to your entire party based on the dailies that you’ve neglected.

Your party becomes your support group, cheering you on to complete your dailies not only to fight the virtual dragon, but the resistance inside yourself. You have real people who are there for you. Changing your habits isn’t easy, and sometimes that dragon is going to knock you out—but you can always choose to keep trying, knowing your friends are there to cheer you on.

“The real rewards aren’t made of pixels. HabitRPG is a tool to unlock the real-life potential and abilities of the people who use it.” — Leslie, HabitRPG co-founder

The Real Bounty

What if you stopped using HabitRPG — would this behavior stick, or would you slide right back into your bad habits? Of all the people I interviewed, none see themselves going back to their old ways. The new habits they’ve created have become a part of their normal, daily routine.

“My apartment is a nicer place to be. HabitRPG made me see that things I can do to stay organized don’t actually take up that much time. There are days I forget to check into the app, but I still do the dishes.” — Tessa Figueroa, level 9 warrior.

The positive habits that are developed during the game don’t fade if you keep that checklist in your mind. Little by little we realize we are the people we’ve always wanted to be: healthy, well-read individuals who don’t skip breakfast, wash the dishes, and floss twice daily.

Bottom Line: We all have the power within ourselves to change our habits and lead more productive lives; it’s just more fun doing it while smiting dragons.