Inspiration
NudgePet began with a simple question: what if everyday progress felt as rewarding as caring for a virtual pet?
Productivity tools can become another source of pressure, especially after a difficult week. Broken streaks, red overdue badges and "you missed a day" guilt make many people quietly give up. I wanted to build the opposite: accountability without guilt. NudgePet celebrates the steps you take, gives those wins a visible place in a companion's story, and welcomes you back without punishing time away.
What it does
NudgePet is a native Android productivity game. Players turn real-life intentions into quests, recurring habits and focus sessions. Completing them earns XP, Essence and Orbs that help a virtual companion level up, grow through visible stages and open up more of its world.
The pet is the heart of the experience. Players can care for it, dress it, decorate its home, grow a Nudge Pet family, explore new regions and take short breaks with the mini-games Nudge Blocks, Letter Tails and Pet Paddocks. Promise Path turns selected daily commitments into a gentle seven-day journey.
Designed for wellbeing (Peace Prize)
NudgePet is built for people who have burned out on productivity apps, or who are rebuilding routines after a hard stretch. Instead of relying on pressure, it relies on encouragement. Every design decision follows from that:
- Absence is never punished. Your pet's care and bond never drain while you're away, there are no streaks to lose, and nothing ever has to be bought back.
- Earned progress is never paywalled. Quests, habits, focus sessions and pet growth are free. Paid features add convenience and self-expression, never relief from guilt.
- Small wins count. Completing any step, however small, visibly helps your companion grow, which turns momentum into something you can see.
- Respectful by default. The core app works offline with no account. AI planning help is optional, runs only after consent, and never decides your rewards. Reminders are gentle nudges, not alarms.
- Private by design. Data stays on the device unless you choose to sign in and sync, and guest and signed-in profiles are kept fully separate.
Why it's feasible: NudgePet is live on Google Play today, runs on everyday Android phones, and doesn't need a connection, an account or a subscription to deliver its core benefit. That makes it accessible to anyone who needs a kinder way to build habits.
Monetization
Nudge Pets is free to download, and the full productivity loop is free forever: quests, habits, focus sessions, pet growth, evolution and every earnable cosmetic. Monetization runs through RevenueCat, with Google Play as the storefront:
- Nudge Pets Plus (monthly or yearly subscription, with a 7-day free trial for new subscribers) unlocks:
- Unlimited AI task planning (free players get 15 AI-planned quests a month)
- Chat with your pet using AI
- Bonus Crystals: 1,200 Crystals for every paid month (14,400 up front for a yearly plan), plus 100 Crystals every day while subscribed, including during the trial
- Crystal packs: consumable purchases from 300 to 21,000 Crystals. Crystals are an optional premium currency. You can swap them for Orbs in the Crystal Exchange (1 Crystal = 2 Orbs) to buy outfits, décor, home scenes and treasure chests sooner, or spend them on the Prism Halo. Every one of those items can also be earned just by playing: Orbs come from every completed quest and achievement.
RevenueCat manages subscriptions, entitlements, purchase restoration and the Crystal balance (as a RevenueCat virtual currency), so purchases stay reliable across devices and reinstalls. RevenueCat webhooks keep the server-side Orb wallet in sync. If a purchase is refunded, its Crystals are reversed, so a refund never leaves free currency behind.
For judges: sign in with Google, then start the free trial from the Plus card in the Shop to unlock every Plus feature. The trial includes the daily 100 Crystals. The 1,200 monthly bundle arrives with the first paid month.
How we built it
NudgePet is built natively in Kotlin and Jetpack Compose. It stores data on the device first using Room and DataStore, and WorkManager handles reminders. A custom whimsical design system provides a live pet renderer, scenic headers and tactile paper surfaces.
Progression runs on deterministic game rules rather than the interface or an AI model, which keeps rewards fair and predictable. Supabase provides optional accounts and sync, and n8n with Google Gemini powers the optional AI quest planner, with offline fallbacks.
Challenges we ran into
The hardest challenge was making the pet motivating without turning it into another obligation. Early designs used loss aversion, where your pet suffered if you didn't show up. That clashed with everything I wanted NudgePet to be, so I removed absence penalties entirely and made returning always safe.
On the technical side, the tricky part was keeping progress trustworthy: offline rewards had to reconcile with an online wallet, and purchases had to hold up even if the app closed mid-transaction.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I shipped a complete, polished native loop where a real-life action helps a companion that players watch grow. Quests, habits, focus, evolution, play, exploration, collecting, decorating and dressing up feel like parts of one world rather than separate tools. And it's live on Google Play for real users.
What we learned
Delight depends on trust. Friendly art matters, but reliable saves, understandable rewards, honest purchases and respectful reminders are what make someone feel safe coming back.
AI works best here as an optional helper, not an authority. The same principle shaped monetization: convenience and expression can be paid for, but earned progress and returning after a break should always stay free.
What's next for NudgePet
NudgePet launched on Google Play on [launch date]. Next, I'll gather onboarding feedback from real users, study retention to see which gentle nudges help people return, and keep tuning the balance between useful productivity tools and satisfying pet progression.
Built With
- android
- coil
- compose
- espresso
- google-gemini-api
- google-play-billing
- gradle
- jetpack
- jetpack-compose
- jetpack-datastore
- jetpack-glance
- junit
- kotlin
- kotlin-symbol-processing-(ksp)
- material-design-3
- mvvm
- n8n
- postgresql
- revenuecat
- room
- sentry
- sqlite
- supabase
- supabase-auth
- workmanager
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