Virtual games can either destroy you or help you become a stronger individual. You also take on various quests and fight the bad guys. For every success that you make, you level up and earn all sorts of rewards. Now, what if you apply the strategies that you’ve learned from these games in real life? Well, in that case, there’s an app that helps you build your personal resilience as you fight against the so-called “Bad Guys” of life. This app is called “SuperBetter”.

What Is It and What Does It Do

Main Functionality

SuperBetter is a personal development app/game that takes on a new approach on how you thrive and succeed with life’s ever-evolving challenges. The main aim of this app is to help you build personal resilience in four core aspects namely – mental, emotional, social and physical. Each day, you will need to take your daily dose to help keep you strong and optimistic. A daily dose basically consists of three parts – your power-ups, your quests and your battles against the “Bad Guys”.

Pros

• Well-designed, stable and responsive UI
• Rich visuals
• Helps you become a better and stronger person through gamification
• Focuses on developing your personal resilience in four core aspects – physical, mental, social and emotional
• You can track your progress and overall personal performance through your activity stats
• You can customize your “To-Do List” by adding your own quests, bad guys, future boosts and power-ups
• You will earn achievements for reaching a certain level as well as for doing various quests or tasks
• Tailored to fit your personal needs and lifestyle
• You can get free advices from experts through power packs

Cons

• It’s not cheat-proof – if a person decides to cheat, there’s no way for the app to determine whether a user is cheating or not
• There’s no welcome guide – If you’re a new user, it could take a while before you can truly understand how the app works and what it’s all about

Discussion

As I’ve already mentioned above, SuperBetter is more than just a personal development app. It also uses various game strategies and mechanics to help you tackle your real life problems. In short, it’s an app that gamifies your life.

The way how the app works is quite simple. As you launch the app, you can begin by viewing your “To-Do List”. It’s the menu that appears on the left panel. If you still can’t see it, just swipe your finger from left to right.

On your to-do list, you can see various sections. For starters, you just need to focus more on power-ups, quests and bad guys. Collectively, these three sections are referred to as your “Daily Dose”. Just like taking a pill, you need to take your daily dose of 3 power-ups and 3 quests as you get ready to battle at least 1 bad guy. The bad guy in this app, however, is nowhere near to those ugly looking beasts and monsters that you see in the gaming world. These bad guys represent your weaknesses, your negative thoughts, dreadful emotions and so on. In addition, these bad guys pose as obstacles to your success as well as to your life’s goals.

Now, keep in mind that by taking your daily dose, you’re building your personal resilience. Your personal resilience represents your ability to withstand the difficulties that you experience as well as your capability to achieve your life’s ultimate goals. Furthermore, your personal resilience focuses on four core aspects – your mental resilience, emotional resilience, social resilience and physical resilience.

As you go through the game, your activity will be logged and your experience level will increase. You will also be able to evaluate your strong and weak points. You can also build allies. To build allies, you can invite others to join you in the game. That’s not all. This game is also tailored to fit your personal needs so the pre-loaded quests and power packs will only serve as your guide. As you continue walking your path to personal development, you can opt to create your own power-ups and quests. You can also identify those elements or events that you consider as “bad guys”.

All in all, I can say that SuperBetter is a very good app that will help guide you through as you strive and dedicate yourself to becoming a healthier and stronger individual. Unfortunately, it’s not cheat-proof so you can literally submit a report saying that you’ve done this and that but in reality, you didn’t even take those tasks and quests seriously. Even so, it’s not the game’s loss – it’s yours.

Functionality wise, I don’t really have any serious issues with this app. It’s very stable and responsive. Plus, it flaunts a well-designed user interface with rich graphics. You can even share your achievements to your friends on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Conclusion and Download Link

SuperBetter offers a refreshing approach to the concept of gamification. Not only does it help you become more resilient to life’s challenges, it also helps you focus on your short-term and long-term goals. So if you’re someone who’s open to idea of building good habits through game-like tasks and quests, then I highly recommend that you give this app a try.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 1.0.6

Requires: Android 4.0 and up

Download size: 4.9MB

SuperBetter on Play Store