Pomodoro Timer—Catch the Ghost 12+

Amazing App!

Pokémon for adults in the best way possible. Enjoy the design aesthetic of the pixelation, quotes, and simple and effective UI.

One UX improvement: The app doesn’t provide an incentive for focus periods of longer lengths: the coins allocated for 4 30-min sessions is more than 1 2-hour session, despite them being the same amount of time. This incentives users to use these lesser focus times, making them use their phones more to set up these shorter sessions - which is counter-intuitive to the purpose of the app.

As a solution, a coin multiplier for longer periods (contra: equal amount of coins by cutting longer periods of time to smaller sections) would enable users to focus for longer periods of time - and enhance the purported functionality of the app.

Otherwise, great job! Love it.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your feedback! As of version 1.3, we award 4x the coins for one 120-minute timer (36 coins) as we do for one 30-minute timer (9 coins). What you were describing was 1.2.2 behavior where they were the same. Please try again on 1.3 and if that isn't working for you, let us know at aeeiee.com/support. The only incentive difference now is that running four 30-minute timers gets you four apparitions, while running one 120-minute timer just gets you one apparition. This is how we incentivize several shorter timers with breaks in-between instead of one long timer. We use gamification techniques like this to promote productivity best practices and brain well-being that help our users avoid mental fatigue and burnout.

Updated to four stars after hearing from the devs

**Update: As I hoped was true the Easter egg apparition was intended to be false. It turns out that the feature that would have marked it as being fiction hadn't rolled out yet. If after the update I feel that it's obvious that this apparition was meant to be tongue in cheek I will update to five stars. But it still rubs me wrong that some people might be able to misinterpret and think that the info was true. **

I honestly thought that I was going to be coming here to write a five star review. Because I love this app. But before I decided to come and write my review I did one more focus session and I got an Easter egg apparition for Mr. Rogers, except that it was a description of being in the fighting in Vietnam. It was written as though Fred Rogers was a soldier in Vietnam and was sharing his experience. The problem with this is that Fred Rogers never served in the military. I did see that the apparition was marked as an Easter egg and I thought maybe that meant that it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t find anything marked anywhere that it was not true. So I went ahead and unlocked all of the rest of the apparitions for Mr. Rogers. There is still nothing to indicate that the Easter egg apparition is not true. I have no idea where this whole “Mr. Rogers in Vietnam" diary entry came from, but it is pure fiction and very misleading not to have it labeled as such. It baffles me that a thirty second Google could have prevented this.

Developer Response ,

The apparition that you caught was an Easter Egg that was a wink and a nod to a decades long urban legend about Fred Rogers being a former Navy Seal or Marine Recon Sniper.

We have an “About Apparition” feature for version 1.3.1 that was delayed which would have explained via an info button ℹ️ that this quote was a joke based on that urban legend. Many of our Easter Eggs contain jokes.

We also communicated this in a response to your email to us yesterday. We hope you understand and update your review accordingly.

Ironically, as I write this, Apple is reviewing our version 1.3.1 which contains the “About Apparition” feature.

Great app!

I love that this app incentivizes not looking at my phone! I do think that getting quicker rewards in the early stages would motivate me more to run more timers. Running 10 timers just to catch my first ghost made me slack off. Overall, the user interface is very good! I love the little ghost/avatars and quotes :) keep up the good work!