Show HN: I built Pokémon Sleep with Rails, but for boosting focus | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I built Pokémon Sleep with Rails, but for boosting focus

focumon.com

6 pointsGodotX6 comments

Hey HN! I'm excited to share Focumon, a gamified productivity app I built using Ruby on Rails & HOTWIRE over the past 6 months. It's designed to keep ADHD brains (like mine) motivated on tap, where you can collect and evolve 100+ pixel monsters by being productive with trainers worldwide.

Since launching 6 months ago, I've shipped 3 new features weekly on average (kudos to Rails giving me superpower as an indie dev), including redesigned productivity tools, 3 special events, and new Focumon to collect!

Try the main workflow without signing up - just click "Show me around" on the desktop site. I'm now working on Focumon full-time, with a native app coming later this year. Would love your feedback and suggestions!

Open articleView on HN

Quick look around, this is absolutely adorable! I really like all the art you've done for this. The show me around thing is a nice touch! I guess it's a service that lets you display a figma (?) prototype in a little web view? Smart! Rails is also a great fit here! I might sign up and take a peek at the network log to see the turboframe magic going on.

The multiplayer aspect, damn that's so cool. It's a really neat idea! Though it does have the possibility to make things a bit too gamified. I'd need to mess around with it to see how it tickles my brain.

> It's designed to keep ADHD brains (like mine) motivated on tap

Maybe the only thing I'm a bit iffy on. There's a LOT of configuration, I don't know if it would help me personally. I will absolutely get locked into futzing around with the todo list rather than actually doing the things on the todo list if given a chance. I think some sort of "shade" optionally appearing over the UI when a task is started would be a good thing to do. Just write the task name on it and the time elapsed. Should have no notifications at all, nor list of upcoming tasks.

Same idea: I think "focus now" should probably be renamed in the UI. "Start Focus Session" would be a good name, using "Focus Now" for a button to start an instant pomodoro session with no goal. All of the configuration can get a bit in the way. Definitely embrace defaults. (Sounds rails-y heh)

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoy it. The shade idea is pretty cool. Currently there's an optional low-contrast mode in the app but it's only for the training center view. I'll experiment with putting shade on more places as well. On default configurations, I'm thinking about letting user customize some sort of shortcuts, maybe visit a specific training center and start a session with a pre-configured goal with just one click.

Most of the art is made by an awesome indie dev Yana from Japan (https://x.com/yanako_rpgs) but I am currently learning pixel art and already added a few original Focumon I made!

Thanks! I'll keep an eye on it :) I should actually get to work rather than using HN all day, so maybe I'll start using Focumon now hah

For default configs, making the default training centre "Player's house" would be really cute. Could be assigned the type of pokemon you picked when creating your account at first, then offer some number of gems to change the type later/free for pro folks. Even better if you have a cute way of integrating that into the story, like you're ordering a same-day-delivery a textbook to your house and giving it to your focumon haha. (If you go that route, please make them look like O'reilly "animal on the cover" dev books! Fluent Fighting, Poison in A Nutshell, Ice Fundamentals)

And great job to the both of you on the art!

Absolutely delightful. The art is the real hero, so cute!

Also, I have sound effects enabled in settings but don’t hear anything. I’m using Safari on iOS on ringer mode

Thanks for reporting this issue! I reproduced it on my device and will patch soon. Edit: this should be fixed.

Looks very nice! What's your business model? The website mentions it's free, what's your plan to plan to keep it going?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com