As soon as I saw the “trailer” for Epic Win, it knew I had to try it out. This iPhone app is basically just a simple task manager, but with the added twist that you have a character, and checking off tasks is represented as the character beating up monsters, collecting gold, loot and experience points, and eventually levelling up. In short, task managements powers a simplistic RPG character. The key takeaway is that this app changes something boring (task management) into something mildly fun. In some way, this is childish, but this slight change made the difference between tracking tasks and not doing it.

The app is not without faults, the first is a text encoding bug, which means that non ascii characters in the name of the character will get mangled. One big missing feature is the ability to somehow synchronise the task list with the computer, there is little incentive to mark tasks as done on the computer, but creating them on the computer makes plenty of sense. If the task list could be somehow retrieved from the IMAP notes that would be perfect.

Being a role-player, I can imagine many ways the game part of the app could be improved, but I realise there is a fine line here. The app should be somehow fun and engrossing so that I’m even more motivated in tracking my tasks, but not give me any serious opportunity to loose time with the application itself. I think being able to see the progress of the character in its appearance would be nice. Maybe sometimes the loot could be new clothes or armor.

Still considering the price of the app, this is a nice little trick to keep me organised.