Data2Dao

Turn a few minutes of daily movement into a cultivation adventure—loosen up, battle monsters, and level up.

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Turn a few minutes of daily movement into a cultivation adventure—loosen up, battle monsters, and level up.

Data2Dao (BigData Cultivation) turns a few minutes of exercise a day into a cultivation adventure: the kind of xianxia story where a mortal gathers Qi, battles inner demons and breaks through realm after realm.

Prop up your iPhone and follow along with stretches, squats and push-ups. The camera tracks your movement, and every rep lands as a strike on a demonic beast. Your sleep, activity and heart rate stop being a row of numbers in a health app and become your Qi, your Inner Demon, your Power and your realm.

Inspiration

I'm this app's most typical user. I spend long days hunched over a desk. I know I should move more and sleep earlier, but I get busy and forget, I quit after a few days, or I open a fitness app and have no idea what to do today.

What most of us lack isn't more workout content. It's better guidance and faster feedback. Real health changes are painfully slow: going to bed a bit earlier or doing a dozen squats barely feels like anything. Games are the opposite. They tell you right away what you did, what you earned and what comes next.

So I started with a simple idea: turn life into data, and data into a game. Let your sleep and activity decide how you train today, and let real movement push the game world forward. No hour-long workouts. A few minutes of genuine movement is enough to start, and those small, pressure-free actions are the ones most likely to stick.

What it does

Sleep restores your Qi. Bad habits feed your Inner Demon.

Data2Dao combines sleep, heart rate, activity and workouts from Apple Health with your in-app training, battle results and feedback to set your cultivation state for the day. Good sleep restores your Qi. Late nights, long hours of sitting and skipped exercise slowly feed your Inner Demon.

The orange cat, the Cat Master, isn't really your teacher, despite its name. It's closer to a manifestation of your own health. When you're in good shape, it moves with more energy. When you're worn out, it slows down with you.

What to train today? Your body decides.

What often stops us isn't a lack of will. It's the effort of deciding: What should I do? For how long? I slept badly, should I still train? Data2Dao adjusts each day's plan to how your body and training have been going. Not feeling great? It goes lighter. Recovering well? The challenge grows. Rest is part of cultivation, not a break in your progress.

Move in front of the camera. Every rep is a strike.

Prop up your iPhone, step back, and the battle begins. The camera tracks you in real time as you stretch, squat, do push-ups and high knees. Every valid rep hits the beast: it loses health, your combo climbs, and the stage moves forward. No watch, sensor or special equipment, just an iPhone and a little space to move safely.

Every change in your body becomes part of your Path.

Training, sleep, activity and rest build up into your cultivation record, so you can see how your Power and realm move with your real life. Keep practicing and you break through to new realms. Stay up late and skip exercise long enough, and your Power can actually drop. Real life isn't an XP bar that only goes up, and your Path isn't either.

From loosening up to real kung fu.

Beyond squats, push-ups and stretches, Data2Dao includes traditional Chinese practices like Baduanjin, the Eight Pieces of Brocade. If you sit at a desk all day, they're a gentle way to loosen a stiff neck, shoulders, back and limbs, and you're slowly learning real Chinese kung fu along the way. Exercise doesn't have to be about a calorie target. It can be cultural, fun and worth learning slowly.

How we built it

Data2Dao is a native iPhone app built with Swift and SwiftUI.

Health data → a personal plan. HealthKit provides sleep, heart rate, activity and workouts. Combined with battle results, training history and user feedback, they generate a plan for each person, and even yours can change from one day to the next. I didn't want a world that plays back pre-written content. Your life data is this world's input.

Camera-based movement tracking. This was one of the most painful parts. Phones sit on floors and tables, people stand two to four meters away, and every body moves differently. I built calibration workflows, tested across distances, angles and movement habits, and tuned each move's logic: sometimes knee angle isn't enough and you also need the hips, sometimes you need every phase of the rep. The goal is to try never to miss a rep someone genuinely completed, because ignoring real effort is the fastest way to lose a player. (Motion calibration is genuinely painful.)

90% of the work went into UI and UX. The app worked long ago, but I didn't want a regular fitness app with a cultivation skin. The visual system fuses modern minimal design with Chinese ink painting: clear hierarchy and white space on one side; ink wash, rice paper, mineral pigments, cinnabar and brushwork on the other. It has to stay a modern, easy iPhone app while making it unmistakable that this is a Chinese cultivation world. Animation, battle feedback and transitions make the data happen instead of sitting still in cards. To me, art and interaction aren't packaging. They are the product.

RevenueCat. Subscriptions and subscription status run on RevenueCat: one pro entitlement, monthly and annual plans with free trials, and a paywall that explains the trial before asking for anything, offers a reminder before it ends, and shows a first-year discount to anyone who closes it. It saved me plenty of StoreKit and restore headaches. But honestly, my favorite feature is the notification every time someone pays. Indie development has long, doubt-filled stretches: days on one threshold, a dozen tries at one spacing value. That notification is a small signal that someone, somewhere, thinks what I made is worth paying for. It still feels great.

Challenges we ran into

The hardest question was how to build a reliable link between a real body and in-game feedback. Players aren't tapping buttons; they stand up, step back and do the squat. If the feedback isn't fast and accurate, trust disappears. What counts as a real rep? When should the system be forgiving, and when must it refuse to count? The real world is far messier than a simulator, so this keeps evolving.

The other was balance. Too much exercise and it's a fitness tool; too much game and the body data stops meaning anything. Too simple and there's nothing to explore after a few days; too complex and new players leave the first time they open it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Not any single feature, but closing the loop:

  • Sleep and activity shape your condition.
  • Your condition shapes today's plan.
  • Real movement drives the battle.
  • The battle leaves a record.
  • Records feed your long-term growth.
  • Power, realms and the world respond to your life in turn.

The goal: a first-timer finishes a session within minutes, while someone months in still meets new realms, new plans and a world that responds a little differently each day. It's no longer a pile of features. It's a world you can keep living in.

What we learned

Small efforts need an immediate response. Ten squats don't visibly change anything, and one early night won't make you a new person. That's why these small actions are so hard to keep. Games are great at this: the hit lands, the beast loses health, your Qi comes back. The squats stay the same; what you get back after them changes. Gamification isn't about turning everything into points. It's about giving small, healthy actions a response right away.

What's next for Data2Dao

This is only the beginning. The next step isn't cramming in features. It's listening to users: where they stop, what actually got them moving, what looks cool but nobody needs, what confuses them on day one. Then iterate fast. I'll keep learning about exercise, rehabilitation and game design, and build in public along the way. I can't wait for everyone to try it.

Try it

Data2Dao is now on the App Store for iPhone, in English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Pro is a monthly or annual subscription; eligible new subscribers can try monthly free for 3 days or annual free for 7 days, with every premium feature unlocked.

You don't need an hour a day. A few minutes is enough to start.

Data2Dao supports general exercise and healthy lifestyle habits; it does not provide medical diagnosis or treatment.

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