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Life & fun · April 1, 2026

I built a virtual pet that gets stronger when you exercise

Hello HN, I built Motion, a fitness app where your virtual pet (we call it a Motmot) grows and gets stronger as you become more active. I wanted a fitness app that didn't feel like a fitness app. Most tools are either data-heavy dashboards or generic streak counters. Neither kept me moving. I thought a creature that visibly reflects your health might create a different kind of attachment. The pet is tied to a broader system: weekly challenges against friends, points for any type of movement, and personalized goals that recalibrate based on your actual activity history rather than fixed…

I built a virtual pet that gets stronger when you exercise launched on April 1, 2026 with 7 votes, #1,538 of 21,248 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.

Visit motion-app.com ↗Alternativestop 7% of April 2026

What it does

Motion is the free fitness app that turns your steps into a game. Rated 4.6/5 on the App Store. Fair challenges with friends and a pet that grows as you move.

Motion makes fitness addictive through gamification and friendly accountability. Set challenges together, track progress, earn rewards, and motivate each other to build habits that stick. 🎉 NEW: Motion Fit Bingo is here! The beloved Fitbit feature Google killed, now revived in Motion. Get in line to join the beta now. That's why Motion connects you with friends, to share goals, complete challenges, and celebrate wins together - because everything's easier with a supportive squad. That's why Motion analyzes your personal activity history, to create personalized weekly goals that actually fit your lifestyle, schedule, and fitness level. That's why Motion uses weekly targets instead of daily…from motion-app.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

Hello HN, I built Motion, a fitness app where your virtual pet (we call it a Motmot) grows and gets stronger as you become more active. I wanted a fitness app that didn't feel like a fitness app. Most tools are either data-heavy dashboards or generic streak counters. Neither kept me moving. I thought a creature that…

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    My cofounder and I have been working on a site called Fitocracy (www.fitocracy.com), which is a social game for fitness. The idea was very much inspired by our experiences growing up as nerds playing video games, later on discovering weightlifting, and drawing the parallel between working out and "leveling yourself up." XKCD has a pretty well known comic to this effect: http://xkcd.com/189/. We find that the metaphor of workout out as leveling up in a video game resonates with quite a few people, so Fitocracy is an attempt to bring that to life. On Fitocracy, tracking your workouts earns you…

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    I started running 5 years ago and it completely changed me. Recently, I decided to train for my first marathon and needed something more than just tracking my runs to motivate me. I noticed all the apps currently available are just trackers and route finders, but nothing has solved the problem of consistency. So I thought of combining the basic idea of the Forest app with running and created a small app for myself which would reward me with plants and trees for my runs. I am not a mobile developer but then i came across Capacitor. Since I knew Next.js and have been working with it for the…

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