FOCUS!
The time you spend focusing becomes a city.
FOCUS! is a focus app that pays you back with a city. Start the timer, concentrate on your study or work, and every minute of attention turns into credits to spend building your world, which grows before your eyes day after day.
The idea
We all know the scene: you sit down to study, and five minutes later your phone is already in your hand. The apps meant to help usually offer a green tick or a chart, and after a while they stop motivating.
FOCUS! starts from a simple question: what if the time spent focusing left something visible behind? Something that stays, that you can look at, that makes you want to come back tomorrow.
So a small pact with yourself was born: an hour of focus is worth credits, and with those credits you build. A house, a road, a park, then a whole neighbourhood, then a city with its lake, stadium, skyscrapers and cars driving through the streets.
How it works
1. Focus. Choose how long you want to work — twenty-five minutes, an hour, whatever you need — and press Start. The screen is clean and quiet: there is only the time ticking by. When you're done, a bell rings.
2. Earn. Every minute turns into credits. No cheating! The app lets you block the apps that distract you the most, so you can't get sidetracked.
3. Build. Switch to the city, open the shop and choose what to build. Prices are set in minutes of focus: a tree costs five minutes, a small house twenty-five, a school three hours. So everything you place has a value you know well, because you earned it.
A living city
Building is only the beginning. Like a real city, this one has needs.
- Power and water. Homes must be connected: you need wind turbines, solar panels, power plants, water tanks. If there isn't enough power, the newest homes stay in the dark.
- Roads. Every building must face a street, otherwise nobody can reach it.
- Jobs. Residents want work: shops, offices and factories offer jobs, and those left without one move away.
- Happiness. Police, fire stations, hospitals, parks, sports facilities, schools and universities make neighbourhoods pleasant. Below a certain threshold people move out and the house is left empty.
When something is wrong, the city tells you: a red exclamation mark appears over the struggling building, and an always-visible panel shows how many residents there are, how much power and water is being used and how happy the population is. They aren't prohibitions, they're problems to solve — and that's where the fun is.
And the city moves: cars, ambulances, fire trucks and police cars drive the streets, stop at junctions and climb onto bridges, while pedestrians walk along the pavements.
A world without end
The city is born on terrain generated on the fly: hills, plains, beaches, lakes and rivers that flow just as they would in nature.
At first you own a single plot of land. The others are bought one at a time, in any direction, with no border to reach: the world goes on as long as you feel like expanding.
And the land can be shaped. With the shovel you raise hills and dig valleys, and water follows: dig a hollow deep enough and you create a lake, dig a canal to the shore and two lakes become one, raise the bed and you find yourself with an island. Bridges and ramps let you cross rivers and slopes.
Attention to detail
A style of its own. More than one hundred and forty buildings and city pieces — cottages, apartment blocks, towers, shops, factories, power plants, bridges, stadiums and a fleet of vehicles.
Sounds made from nothing. The click of buttons, the thud of a building being placed, the end-of-session bell: nine sound effects to make your city feel more alive.
Your stats. Streaks, records, total hours and a chart of the last two weeks, where even empty days get their own column, because the gap is what tells the story. The streak holds until midnight: if you haven't started yet today, the day isn't lost.
A timer you can trust. Time is measured with the computer's clock. Not even broken-up minutes go to waste: twenty three-minute sessions are worth exactly as much as a full hour.
The project at a glance
| What it is | A focus app that rewards study or work time with a 3D city to build |
|---|---|
| For whom | Students, professionals, anyone who wants to get distracted less and see their progress |
| Platform | Windows, a single file to download: no installation |
| Language | Italian |
| Cost | Free and open source |
| Built with | Godot (game engine) and Blender (3D graphics) |
| Author | Gabriele Fiorucci — concept, design, development, graphics and sound |
Download it or browse the code: github.com/GabrieleFiorucci03/FOCUS- ↗
Future developments
- English language
- Android and Apple versions
- Advanced app blocking: SUPERFOCUS!, an advanced feature that blocks some apps or the whole phone, so you don't fall for the temptation to take a peek.
- Ads and plus subscriptions