iPhone review: Epic Win

Surely you must have played the Game of Life? It was a board game that always appealed to me; partly because it had a clicky spinning wheel instead of regular dice, but also because of the neatness of the whole experience - the well behaved blue and pink pegs, the salary that always came in on time, the guarantee that insurance and university really did pay off.

Perhaps it's no surprise then that I'm a big believer in organizing my real life with lots of lists - I have tried full-on GTD but really what I prefer are just to do lists, on paper, so that I can underline, star and vigorously score out entries when they're done. Even better is the act of feeding the whole list to the shredder when everything is done.

I've been playing around with a new iPhone app called Epic Win, which in some ways is like a 21st century Game of Life. Specifically it's the game of your life.
[break]
It's not modelled on a board game though - it's actually much more like an RPG game, only without the quests, the dialogue, the combat and the baddies. What's left? The levelling up and the loot, of course. In Epic Win, you enter the tasks on your to do list, decide what attribute it taxes (choosing from strength, stamina, intellect, social or spirit) and then you set the level of epicness, which is the number of points you'll get when it's done.


Once you've got your list of tasks (sorry, quests) it's up to you to get out there and complete them. Once done, you hold down your finger on the quest in Epic Win, there's a fun little animation and you collect your points. If you're going well, you may level up or find some loot.

The App is beautifully illustrated; there's a range of characters to chose as your avatar, from the lunkheaded warrior to the skeleton Skelly (description: "worked to the bone"), all drawn in a style that's a bit like 60s Hanna Barbera, flat shapes that are full of personality.

You can view the loot you've got, and silhouettes that hint at what's to come, and proceedings are enlivened with some nice animation and great sound effects - particularly the hooning, Brian Blessed style cry of "Epic Win" when you load the app.


There are some drawbacks to Epic Win's practicality - one of the reasons I find myself always using paper to do lists is that they're the easiest, simplest method with nothing to slow me down.

Verdict: Deciding on points and using the game structure means comparatively speaking it's a fair bit of hassle to use day-to-day. Still, Theres no doubt Epic Win has been put together with real love and attention to detail, and it's original and fun. Not bad for £1.79 either.

And now I've reviewed it, that's another thing off my to do list which gets another 100 points closer to levelling up!

Epic Win is available from the AppStore for £1.99 / $2.99.