Meet your Buff Buddy — a pocket gym partner who lives in a retro LCD gym and grows exactly the way you do: for real. Workouts are the only way he gains XP and muscle — no taps, no timers, no pay-to-progress. If it didn't happen in the gym, on the run, or on the mat, it didn't happen. He has seven muscle stages, from Scrawny to Beast, driven by your training — and honest decay if you disappear: a 48-hour grace period, forgiving rates, and free Rest Weeks for vacations and sick days. He never shames you; he believes in you.
Play the web build
The complete game is playable right here, in your browser — every system from the design: the XP engine, decay and comeback, Rest Weeks, the Daily Move, the Sparring Ring, crews and titles, the Tale of the Tape, and the cosmetic shop in test mode. Your progress saves in your own browser on this device. Two honest limits: this web build's workout form stands in for automatic health sync (real sync needs the native app, which is not built yet), and its Test Lab time controls exist so decay and seasons can be tried without waiting real weeks — they are test tools, not game features.
Play Buff Buddy in your browser →
How it works
- Pick 1 of 3 bodies and meet your buddy — the opening high-five builds bond only, never XP.
- Log real workouts (type, minutes, effort): XP = minutes × intensity × type bonus — a 45-minute moderate lift earns 56 XP — and watch him morph through 7 muscle stages.
- Keep moving daily: the Daily Move (6,000 steps or pushes) earns a stamp and keeps him happy; training is what makes him strong.
- Show off in the turn-based Sparring Ring — the ring displays your training and grants zero XP, always.
- Chase crew and city titles for consistency, and read your week back as a Tale of the Tape fight poster.
Price: Free to play in the web build above — test mode, $0 charged (The game's designed prices for a future native build are: Champion Tier $3.99/mo or $29.99/yr, Season Pass $4.99 per 6-week season, Pro Bundle $19.99, plus a Coins cosmetic shop. None of those can be bought today: every purchase in the web build is a test-mode simulation that charges $0, and no store listing exists.)
Honest monetization — the never list
Free forever in the design: the full buddy, full progression, 7 muscle stages, crew titles, the decay system, the Tale of the Tape, sparring, the Daily Move, and 2 Rest Weeks per season. Players who pay in the native design pay for identity and status — never for power, XP, or decay relief.
Never, by design: no decay-skip sales, no purchasable XP, no loot boxes or gacha, no pay-to-win title boosts, no fake countdowns, no confirm-shaming, and cancellation is frictionless. In this web build all of it is test mode anyway — receipts are logged as test mode and $0 is charged.
Where it stands — the honest state
The complete game exists today as the playable web build linked above. It was re-verified for this page: the full playtest harness passes 23 of 23 checks (XP math, decay curve, comeback, exactly-once backfill, title math, test-mode purchases at $0), and every button in the game is wired — no dead buttons, no stub screens.
What does not exist yet: the native app. Buff Buddy is not listed in the App Store or Google Play, there is no release date, and this page promises neither. The real doors for this game are the app stores, and reaching them takes the founder's native-build steps listed below.
Two calls also belong to the founder and are still his to make: a playtest of this build on a real phone (how it feels, and how the buddy looks at each stage on a real screen) — this page was verified from a server, not from his phone — and one design ruling described in the game's records. Neither blocks playing the web build today.
What the native build still needs (the founder's steps)
A native build (Unity, with Apple HealthKit and Google Health Connect sync) is the production path — real health sync and real payments require it. With it come the founder's developer accounts and fees ($99/yr Apple, $25 Google Play), real in-app-purchase products created at the designed prices, a rewarded-ad SDK for the opt-in boosts, a server backend for the authoritative XP ledger and titles, final store screenshots captured from the native build, and submission. None of that has been attempted, and nothing on this page starts it.
The images in the game's store package are from the founder-approved mockup set — they are the art targets, not screenshots of a native build — so this page shows none of them rather than present them as captures. The playable build above is the real thing, in its web form.
The record behind it, kept in the open
The game's own analysis record (October 2026) scored Buff Buddy at roughly −$5,400 expected year-1 net on organic discovery alone, with kill lines set in advance: a D30 retention target of 25% or better, and shelve it if D30 falls below 12% after tuning. The founder ordered the game built complete anyway, with that record carried — not dropped — into its store package and this page.
Join the Buff Buddy launch-interest list
This is a launch-interest list only. Joining records your interest so we can write to you if Buff Buddy reaches the app stores. It is not a download, not a preorder, and not a purchase — the native app is not built yet, nothing is listed in any store, and nothing will be charged. The complete web build is playable free, right now, at the link above.