The idea of this app came from wanting to help my own self. 

I had, and continue to have, some challenges in life that I believed could be optimised with a little assistance. In the same way that videogames were companions of mine growing up, I thought to make an immersive game that could serve as a companion to myself, and possibly others, too.

This app is intended to connect somebody with their higher, or inner-selves. It's essentially you providing companionship and care for your own self, with the app acting as a tool -- not unlike a first aid kit.

With some of the challenges of providing this level of self-care intuitively, I thought to employ my game design skills to leverage the kind of psychology seen in video games around captivating and immersing users for the direct benefit of the user, as opposed to exploiting and pillaging from them.

My hypothesis was that design elements like aesthetics, pacing, and reward systems could be used to motivate, immerse, and inspire people towards investing in themselves, as opposed to investing in skills or fiction that was useful exclusively within the game itself (nothing wrong with that, of course). In short, gamifying self-improvement. 

This is not a new idea - the gamification of todo-lists is commonly seen in other apps, but less common is the gamification of self-care, and I had my own personal flavour and vision of this that I thought could be valuable.

To achieve my vision, I wanted to make a Role-Playing Game where the main character is you and everything serves your growth:

• Inventory of uplifting items you can collect, browse, and share. 
• Quests you can give yourself that you can complete and feel accomplished. 
• Statistics and graphs you can peruse and see how far you've come and how much you've grown. 
• A journal where you can record your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. 
• An uplifting companion you can speak with that can hold space and provide encouragement.

I thought to start with just the first point of obtaining helpful notes of encouragement, since making an RPG is a lot of work!

The way to make the acquisition of helpful messages enticing, I thought, was to treat them as items and provide them through lootboxes. Imagine being able to obtain inspiration, encouragement, or positivity on demand via an infinite supply of lootboxes? That was my goal.

I made a prototype and the idea was cute. It was very simple, and so I started looking at expanding the app - not with new features, but with new types of items. This version is the completed version of that exploration (with more items to come!).

In focusing exclusively on making a deep and thorough inventory system, I'd found that I managed to accomplish 4 of the 5 above points - all were items minus the companion you can speak with, which would require a dialogue system. And who knows, maybe a dialogue tree could be captured in an item, too!

In any case, I'm pretty happy with the mileage I've gotten out of this one feature.

The future looks bright.

Kia kaha <3