Keep New Year’s Resolutions, Fight Bosses

HabitRPG is a Role Playing Game to help you improve your real life habits (eat healthy, stop smoking, write more, etc). It’s grown a lot in the past few months. We’ve fixed a lotta bugs, added Classes, Mounts, Challenges, and much more. We’re just about finished with our Kickstarter promised-features (only a couple small bits left), but I have a lot to say about most our recent feature Bosses.

After fighting my first boss and the achieving level 15 for the first time since creating Habit, it’s my opinion that Bosses is the most important feature in HabitRPG for self-improvement. I think this one little feature is going to change your lives. Here’s how it works.

You find or purchase a quest scroll. It’s either a “collection quest” (find 10 feathers and 5 gold ingots for the dwarf lord, receive a feathered golden helm, that sorta thing), or a “boss quest”. Bosses drop rare and special items, an achievement, and a big chunk of GP & Exp. You must fight bosses in parties (and trust me, you’ll need to). When the boss battle begins (looks like this), it’s all cards in. Each Daily and Todo you complete hurts the boss (tallied the next morning, common point of confusion), and for each missed Daily the boss hurts. your. party. This is the key. When it’s your cron turn, it’s all eyes on you. “@lefnire, don’t get us killed.” Peer pressure. Accountability. Teamwork. Your friends are depending on you to hit the gym and stop smoking. Fail, and they fail.

And it works! In my party are the illustrious Seneca and Bailey, famous for their high levels and flawless streaks. I get panicked Github tickets when either lose 10hp from a bug; they’ve built a little empire for their avatars. I usually do about half my dailies. So what, I lose a gear piece and what little gold I’ve earned. Not this time, I was sweating bullets staying up late to finish tasks so not to destroy their hard work. It’s vastly different when it’s social.

Additionally, Bosses give Habit a purpose for high levels, multiple classes, and provides a solution to the game-burnout people have experienced.

High levels. Many bosses will have level requirements, and higher levels will deal more damage. Vice, the boss in this post (designed by the very talented @baconsaur), will likely have a lvl ~40 req.

Classes. They finally have purpose. Healers heal (much needed!), warriors and wizards deal damage, and rogues are good for collection quests (high drop-rate).

Game burnout. Some players have started to think “well, I guess I’ve finished Habit…” With the introduction of Bosses, contributors can easily (within minutes) add new bosses to the system. You can create story arcs, with certain quests requiring others. This finally gives Habit a sustainable game-progression play style.

So fight bosses! Fulfill your New Year’s resolutions! There’s a special holiday boss “Trapper Santa” right now that expires Jan 31. Near the end, we’ll be adding many more Bosses and Quests, but slay the Trapper while you have time.