Kategorie: Games

Bow Down Before the Mistress of Task Domination

epicwinRemember when I said „Game base everything“? I was mostly talking about my love for Stack Overflow back then, but there are more and more examples of how making a game out of something (mostly in terms of earning points and badges) can motivate people to take part in something that might otherwise seem suspiciously like work.

Now I stumbled upon something that took one of the most boring things you know – your personal to do list – and turns it into… wait for it… an RPG.

It’s an iPhone app (also available for the iPod touch) and it’s called EpicWin. It’s fairly simple and doesn’t contain any fancy graphics, but it does the trick. You can add your items to your to do list, assign points to them and decide which of your for skills you’re levelling up (stamina, strength, intellect, social and spirit are the options).

For each quest (i.e. item on your to do list) that you manage to complete you get the points and advance further on a little map, collecting loot once you’ve reached a certain place. You also get level-ups for your skills.

Of course, you still enter the tasks by yourself. Theoretically you could just add quest after quest and advance in amazing speed, but where would be the fun in that? If you don’t need a task manager, you won’t need this app. But if you do need a little trick to manage all the not-so-fun chores that pile up around you and at least give you the feeling like you’re advancing to somewhere somehow, this might give you a bit more motivation than just plain old to do lists.

Mind you, if you need to really organize your tasks, add tags and priorisations, define contacts and so on, this also isn’t for you.

It’s for people like me who just need a little push sometimes and who like to pretend they’re a warrior princess in a fantasy world for whom making an appointment with a self storage facility sounds just a bit more fancier if it’s a quest which will add one point to your intellect skill.

You can visit their website here or have a look at the app in the iTunes AppStore here.

PS: And now I have earned my fifty points of intellect and advance further towards my next loot. Yay!

Mini-Blogging: What’s Eating My Time

It’s been pretty quiet here, but there’s a reason for that and since it won’t fit into 140 characters and I do feel a bit bad about not writing anything at all here, I thought I’d give you a short heads up on what I’ve been up to these days.

Here’s the thing. A few weeks ago there was nothing on TV which made me tell my husband that I was thinking of buying a Wii somewhen soon which made him dare me to buy one right that evening. By the way it was about 7pm when this happened, which meant that we pretty much ran out of the Italian restaurant, jump into the car and drive to the next electronic store. There I pretty much stopped the first guy to walk around in the games department and said something to him, which can easily be translated into: „We’d like to spend lots of money. Sell me a Wii and whatever equipment there is.“ Which he did.

So we’ve got a Wii. Of course we also bought the Balance Board right away, plus two additional games, so we’re set for now. Can’t wait for Wii Fit Plus to be released though. I want that chicken suit!

I also still have that Nintendo DS I got for my birthday last year. I’ve been pretty bad with buying games for the DS. Of course I’ve got one of the Dr. Kawashima’s which I’m pretty sure everyone has. I also have one of those hidden object games, which was a bit of a letdown (I have a similar game on my iPod which I loved). I got Professor Layton’s Curious Village which was so awesome that I dragged it out because I didn’t want it to end.

And since last Wednesday I have Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

Conincidentally, last week was also the week when the first part of Monkey Island was released for the iPod.

So, let me get that straight for you one last time: There’s the Wii, Legend of Zelda and Monkey Island. Do you need any more explanation on why I can’t seem to make time to blog?

I thought so.