Victoris 2.5.0: real coins, an endless challenge and friends

On Friday 31 July we pushed Victoris 2.5.0 live, on victoris.es and on victoris.net too — that is what having both is for. Behind it there are months of meetings, notebooks full of crossed-out ideas and a few healthy arguments about what actually gets a person off the sofa. Today we get to celebrate it by telling you what changes and, above all, why we built it this way.

Coins: achievements you can actually hold

Achievements are everywhere these days. There are apps that congratulate you for sleeping, for opening the app, for pretty much breathing. We wanted unlocking something to mean something, so we gave it a twist: in Victoris you will still unlock achievements with their stickers — ours are prettier, by the way — but if you really put the work in, you will unlock coins.

Real coins: five centimetres across, made of metal, with proper weight in your hand. As you unlock them, we ship them with your next order. You cannot buy them, you earn them. That is the whole point.

The infinite challenge: a goal that never ends

We wanted to keep motivation alive, but we cannot release a new medal every month, and we did not want to turn the app into a machine for squeezing its users (partly because we are its first users). Since we already had coins that unlock when you hit a target, the answer was almost written for us: a challenge with no finish line.

That is how the infinite challenge was born. You add kilometres with no cap, no closing date and no rival other than yourself. It is the purest version of something we have been writing about here for a while: that routine eventually beats motivation, and that a goal which stays open is easier to hold on to than one with an expiry date.

Bring a friend and you both win

While we get teams ready, we did not want recommending Victoris to be a favour you do us for free. From now on, if you invite a friend, they get 5 € off; and if they use it and sign up for a challenge, we give you another 5 € towards yours. It is not a fortune, but it is an honest thank you: whoever helps us grow deserves more than a pat on the back. You will find the referral programme on the front page of your user area.

And there are prizes along the way: one friend unlocks a coin, five friends unlock another, and if you keep bringing people in… keep bringing people in, because we keep counting.

The fifteen-friend shirt

Handing out coins for bringing friends is fine. But if by that point you are practically a brand ambassador, the least we can do is dress you like one. And not a cheap shirt either: it is the one we wear for our own running sessions, feather-light, the kind you barely notice, very close to the one our friends at the Spanish Marine Corps hand out in the runner's bag at their races. Bring fifteen friends, tell us your story, and the Victoris shirt is yours.

Tell us your story

Community matters to us more than any other metric. If you are just starting out, you are not alone: every one of us has had that first day when even getting out of the front door is hard. We want to know how yours went, how you feel now and what you would say to someone standing exactly where you were. Write to us and we will publish your story here on the blog; if enough of them arrive, they will get a section of their own. In the end it comes back to what we said about small habits and real change: the stories that stick are not the epic ones, they are the ordinary people who started one day.

Also: new screens and the small print

The visual overhaul has been huge. We moved to Material 3 Expressive, and you can install Victoris on just about anything running Android, plus the web and Windows. There are explanations in every corner, tutorials are on the way, and we are updating the PDFs for the more "Pro" versions. We have also refreshed the legal notice, the privacy policy, data protection and the FAQ: not the fun part of a release, but do give it a look. And at info@victoris.es we are paying more attention than ever to what you tell us: more coins? We are in. Stickers printed on leather patches? Well, why not?

We promise to stay the same cheerful crew from Cádiz who work non-stop, and to keep bringing updates to the project.

The Victoris team

We are thrilled to share this release with you. If you already have a challenge under way, open the app and have a poke around; and if you do not, the Victoris challenges are waiting. A big hug from all of us.