nocturnal-nights
Built with my partner for the people who mean to be asleep by midnight and end up scrolling until 2am. A nocturnal creature companion works for you while you sleep, and the longer you leave your phone alone, the more it earns you.
Overview
Forest, but for bedtime.
So many people struggle to switch off at night. You pick up your phone for a minute and it's 2am, and you're due up at 7. We wanted to build something that locks you out from a bedtime you choose, the same idea as the app Forest, but built around sleep instead of focus.
The incentive is a nocturnal creature companion who works on your behalf while you sleep. The less you interrupt them, the more they earn you, rewards you can spend on decorating their den, buying them items, or protecting your streak.
The problem
Willpower alone doesn't keep people off their phones at night. We wanted a system that makes staying off your phone feel like it's doing something for you, rather than just another rule you're trying to follow.
My role
A duo project with my partner: she's designing and illustrating the creature and world, I'm designing the product and building it.
How it works
A bedtime that locks you out
Set the time you want to be off your phone, and the app shuts you out from there, the core mechanic the whole experience is built around.
A companion that works while you sleep
Name and meet your creature during onboarding. The longer you leave your phone alone overnight, the more they earn for you.
Rewards worth staying off for
Spend what your companion earns on decorating their den, new items, and streak freezes for the nights that go wrong.
Stack & architecture
Onboarding and sleep preferences run through a Zustand store with AsyncStorage persistence, so the wizard, dashboard and sleep sessions all stay in sync without reloading state from scratch.
What I learned
The mechanic that actually changes behaviour, locking the phone out, turned out to be the hardest and most important part to get right, just as hard as the reward layer sitting on top of it.