nomi | a pet for your watch 4+

Excellent Watch app!

Quick update: one thing I would love is if the hearts you earn saved up - right now, you have to remember to feed your Nomi when the heart ring is full, which can mean pausing in your workout. If you forget to do this, you could go through an entire workout and have burned enough calories for two or three hearts, but you still only get one.

This app is adorable, fun, and motivates me to stay active throughout the day. The Tamagotchi-like critter is so cute, and I hate seeing it sadface, so I want to stay active to be able to keep feeding it. When I first got the app the only way to get hearts to feed the critter was using steps, which was pretty difficult with the current ‘stay at home’ restrictions (even though I’ve been exercising daily, my step count is terrible). However, the developer was very understanding and responsive, and quickly released an update allowing you to use calories instead. I love the app and really the only thing I can think of to improve it at this point would be to make it actually possible to pet the critter. (If it’s happy, you can tap it and it does a little happy nudge type movement, but you can’t give it scritches.) I’m not sure how feasible this is for a cute little watch app (don’t know how hard it would be to make it that interactive or whether the watch can even support such a thing), but it would be cute. TL;DR, if you’re a sucker for cute critters to motivate you to exercise, GET THIS APP!

Developer Response ,

This is brilliant feedback. We try to be as reactive as we can be and really do value your ideas. We're now also obsessing about more ways to interact with your Nomi!

TL;DR, you're awesome. Thank you.

Fun electronic pal

Update: glitch happened twice yesterday. RIP Timothy IV - 84 days old.

Update: malfunction is happening even with the update on my watch. I’ve lost at least 7 extra hearts due to this glitch. Update: I manually forced an update on my watch and, fingers crossed, the quick boogie malfunction hasn’t happened yet. I’ve played four times and earned four hearts. Update: quick boogie is still malfunctioning. My heart rate averaged 150 during the entire 11 minutes and it still told me I lost. Update: played the quick boogie, I was on a rowing machine and my heart rate was well-above the target the ENTIRE time but it did not record it. So I quit halfway through and started over. It happened again. I did the whole thing this time, hoping that maybe the bar just wasn’t filling in, since there was a check mark in the bottom corner each minute. It still told me I lost and did not give me a heart. Hopefully my pet doesn’t die tomorrow when I know I’ll be unable to exercise. My nomi, Timothy IV (RIP Timothy Sr, Timothy Jr, and Timothy the third) is fun. It keeps me accountable because I really don’t want him to die. Those tears get me. Lol. It’s a lot less glitchy since I got a new watch.

Developer Response ,

Update: I am so sorry. I really am. I think we may have discovered something that might be causing it. On your Apple Watch, can you please disable Autopause in: Settings > General > Workout > Autopause and see if that works?

Thanks so much for your patience. We’re working through this one and it’s a tough nut to crack — everything we test it on seems to be working.

Can you please reach out to hi@nomi.pet with some info about:

1. What exactly happens when you tap on the game?
2. Which version of the Apple Watch do you have?
3. What OS version are you using?

Any help would be appreciated!

I love it but it needs some work

I absolutely love Nomi, but it could use some more features for flexibility. I have chronic illness that makes my “best” less than other peoples’ “best”. Even on casual, it’s been really hard to keep my Nomi alive. I think the solution to this is allowing people to set custom energy/step goals. Of course it would allow people to “cheat,” but who cares? It’s not a competition sport, they’d only be “cheating” themselves. A tool for our own betterment needs to be flexible to our personal goals. No one can set a goal that everyone can meet. Other changes that would help are giving Nomi more total hearts to allow some buffer time if we forget our watches somewhere (I left my watch at work overnight and my Nomi was dead the next morning despite being fully fed, I was very upset because I managed to keep that little guy alive for 74 days despite the difficulty!) or if we’re sick that day and can’t exercise much. To that end, I agree with other commenters that a “pause”. Feature would be nice. I also really think increasing the sleep time from 6 hours to 8 would help. I mean, who only sleeps 6 hours? I sleep 10 hours and my Nomi is always nearly dead by the time I get up. The average person sleeps 8 hours so I think it makes more sense. Or allow us to set custom sleep and wake times. Again, love the concept and the artwork is really cute, but it really needs these changes to become more functional and less of a source of stress.