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Tap the exercises you did today. Your character starts at Stage 1: Slim and grows as your total days add up.
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Clear all 10 Home exercises and all 10 Gym exercises, 20 in total, in one day to earn a Perfect Medal.
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Premium: log your weight and see changes on a chart. Your records are also included in your iPhone's iCloud Backup.
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Premium Analytics: current streak, total days, a monthly calendar and this month's completion rate.
Inspiration
Around me in Japan, new gyms seem to open everywhere. Every time I saw another one, I thought: more and more people want to start strength training. But not everyone can go to a gym, and many people quit before it becomes a habit. So I wanted to make an app that anyone can use, at home or at the gym, and that makes you want to come back tomorrow.
What it does
Muscle Odyssey is a simple workout habit app for everyone, young or old.
- Tap the exercises you did today: 10 home exercises and 10 gym exercises. No sets or reps to count.
- Complete 10 exercises in a day, and your total days go up by one.
- Your character grows through 5 stages: Slim, Toned, Lean Athletic, Powerhouse, and finally Muscle God.
- Clear all 20 exercises in one day to earn a Perfect Medal.
- One journey lasts 365 days. After that, you get a gold star and start the next lap.
- Available in English, Japanese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese and Korean.
What makes it different
Most workout trackers are made for people who already love the gym. I focused on two things: home workouts, so you can start without a gym membership, and the growth of your character from Slim to Muscle God. Watching your character change is a small reward that makes the habit feel like a game.
How it makes money
The core habit features are free. Premium unlocks the Analytics screen: current streak, monthly completion rate, a calendar of your records, a body weight log with a chart, and a protein log.
- Monthly: $4.99 / Yearly: $42.99 (about 28% less than paying monthly for a year)
- 7-day free trial for new subscribers
- Local prices for key markets, for example ¥800 / ¥7,000 in Japan
- Purchases, entitlements and restoring purchases are handled with RevenueCat
How I built it
I had no programming experience, and I only have a Windows PC, no Mac. I built the app in Swift and SwiftUI with AI as my coding partner, edited the code on GitHub in the browser, and built and uploaded it with Codemagic. Honestly, AI wrote most of the code. The hardest part for me was not the code. It was deciding what to build, and researching what price people would actually pay for a subscription like this.
What I learned
I learned how important market research is. At first, I did not think about users in Korea or Taiwan at all. But while I was researching monthly and yearly subscription prices, I found that Korea and Taiwan actually have a lot of gyms too, so I added Korean and Traditional Chinese and set local prices. Now I think proper market research is one of the most important parts of making an app.
What's next
I want to make an Android version, so that more people can use Muscle Odyssey.
Categories
RevenueCat Peace Prize: Muscle Odyssey helps people of all ages start a strength training habit and keep it, even if they never go to a gym. You only need a few minutes at home and one tap per exercise.
HAMM Award: The habit itself is free for everyone. People who want to look back on their progress in more depth can choose a monthly or yearly plan, with a 7-day free trial and local pricing.
RevenueCat Design Award: The app shows a percentage and a progress bar. What the character adds is the part a number cannot do. Across five stages the same silhouette is redrawn with a bigger build, so the change looks like your own body changing, not a counter going up. One tap records a workout: no sets, no reps, nothing to type in the main loop. White background, amber as the only interface colour, one deep teal kept for the character, and colour is never the only thing carrying the meaning — a finished exercise turns amber and says "Completed". Exercise names are written for a beginner in all five languages.
Grand Prize: The app went live on 18 September 2026, so this is a launch story, not a growth story. The numbers are small and they are real. From 18 to 29 September: 403 impressions, 48 product page views, 11 first-time downloads, 0 paid conversions.
After launch I spent my time on the store listing, not new features. I set the prices by hand for Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Spanish-speaking markets. I rewrote the keywords for each language instead of translating the English ones, using the words people there actually search for. And I built a marketing site in five languages.
The numbers since then show why that matters: 376 of the 403 impressions came from App Store search. Search is almost the only way people find the app. Whether the new keywords have helped yet, I cannot say. They went live on 22 September, and one week of data is too short to tell.
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