Quirl - The Allowance Game

What is Quirl app?

Quirl is a mix between an allowance/pocket money app and a chore tracker. The merging doesn’t stop there, as the app also stirs in a decent amount of gamification. At their most austere, chore tracker apps are little more than child-friendly to-do lists that link family members. At the other end of the spectrum, you’d have Quirl, which wraps all of the administration and tracking within a motivational and fun game-like package.

Quirl’s name comes from splicing quest with the modern initialism, IRL (in real life). Kids do battle in the fantasy world to complete game quests, earn rewards and, most importantly, undertake the quests their parents set in the real world. Sometimes we know these as chores and assignments!

These real-life quests can be typical chores like washing the dishes every day or on set days. Or they could be linked to one-off tasks and completing important school work. Parents have the flexibility to choose and can take plenty of inspiration from the app.

Every aspect of encouraging kids to meet their responsibilities, helping them to remember, tracking when they have completed tasks, letting their parents know, tracking allowances, and rewarding kids is enhanced and supported by Quirl. Among all of the game-like features to encourage and track chores, there is even a fun match-3 game and the opportunity to battle monsters between tasks!

What we love about Quirl app.

Gamification is not just a buzzword. The addition of game-like features can motivate kids to do things they might not otherwise want to do. Quirl doesn’t only gamify its use by adopting minigames, levelling up and a medieval fantasy style, but it effectively incorporates the practical completion of chores and makes those part of a quest.

There are many small features, options, and choices in the app that alone might not seem like much but combine to make the app flexible and reflect how much thought has gone into its design. Quirl has not only achieved an immersive and compelling experience, but the attention to detail makes it hugely attractive and relevant to most parents and children.

Carrying through Quirl’s real-life focus, alongside the gamification, into areas like personal reflection, physical exercise, and relaxation techniques is not something you might expect to find in the app, but their presence enhances the app and is another opportunity it takes to improve kids’ lives and education.

What skills does it improve?

Although the app itself is not educational in the academic sense, the habits it assists in building in kids contribute towards their personal growth. Encouraging children to take on a helpful role in their family can promote time management skills, responsibility, and consideration.

What age is it appropriate for?

Kids who are old enough to be given chores and tasks to complete are ready to use this app. They will need to be able to read well enough to understand the allocated tasks and use some of the app’s features.

Is Quirl app easy to use?

• For kids:

Kids will be right at home with Quirl. Its tools, features, and look are inspired by games making it easy to understand the link between task completion and rewards. The crystals and coins in-game currencies, the visiting of market places to

spend them, the games and other features closely reflect entertainment titles, except they are sometimes derived from real-world activities and can be spent on real-world (or digital) items.

Switching between sections of the app is straightforward. The actual chore tracking for kids is essentially a to-do list. It is satisfying to tick off the items and see the outstanding jobs deplete—like it is in all good to-do list apps.

• For parents:

Sometimes when setting up an app like Quirl, people can become overwhelmed by choices. Fortunately, where you might not know how to proceed, the app offers sensible default options. You can always adjust these later, but in the meantime, they work to get you all using Quirl so that you can understand it better.

The sign-up process might also be child-initiated. Your kids could take the initiative and set themselves up as child users of Quirl and then send you a link to get going with a parent profile.

Whether you or your kids take the first step on the Quirl quest, the app makes it easy to get everyone’s account going and family members linked up.

How will students benefit?

Kids understand progress meters and levels. Quirl takes advantage of this to keep kids motivated to achieve their goals. With all of the graphical flourishes of popular games, Quirl shows kids how far along they are to earning their promised rewards. 

Kids will love the clarity that Quirl gives them. They’ll know what is expected of them and by when. The app records promised rewards to help kids stay motivated. The app’s gamification is also sensibly planned. For example, competition only works when there is a reasonable chance of success. The choice of duration on the leaderboards between all time and weekly ensures that long term progress is recognised but that each child can still strive to ‘win’ the current week.

The most convenient way to use Quirl, which gives kids the most sense of ownership, would be to put it on their phones. However, if your child does not have a suitable device, you can easily switch the Quirl app on your phone between the parent and child account.

Quirl’s links to real-life aren’t restricted to chores. It includes features to help kids reflect on their lives and think about healthy living. They are encouraged by the app to complete a journal where they reflect on the quests they have completed. There are also links to guides and videos related to relaxation and exercise.

How will parents benefit?

Quirl should ease family relations by freeing up parents from having to nag. They know that their kids will receive reminders when a due date for a chore or assignment is imminent.

A criticism sometimes levelled at chore apps that track rewards is that they reduce family responsibility to a transaction. At its core, Quirl is an organisational app, and its to-do lists and reward tracking features show the benefits of being organised. 

Unless your ethos does not accept rewarding kids for helping out or doing well, then the flexibility afforded to parents to set the rewards that they feel are appropriate will let it Quirl fit in with your approach. You can switch off the whole marketplace if you choose, or just parts of it. In place, you can put in custom rewards.

The app also conforms well to each family’s circumstances and preferences. Rewards are fully customisable, so they can range from those that cost money to granting kids a free treat, like staying up later to watch a movie.

You can split kids’ allowances/pocket money into different components: a guaranteed amount, an amount that reflects how many chores/assignments kids have completed, and a surprise amount that is randomly triggered as kids use the app. This final component is a good idea that fits in well with the gamified approach of the app as the potential for surprise rewards is a successful tactic also used by computer games.

Whatever breakdown you choose, your kids’ total allowances will not exceed the limit you set.

What can Quirl app improve on?

Quirl’s approach to user data is open and honest. To conform with asking only for the minimal data to be functional, however, it would be better if the app didn’t ask for a full date of birth. Restricting this to only the year, or possibly month and year would still let the app use the age information for customising the content.

You might be a little confused when you log in to a new app install if you already have an account. There doesn’t appear to be anywhere to sign in. The only option is to create an account, but you’ll find the existing-user options if you click this. Bringing this option forward a screen will help avoid this problem.

How much does Quirl app cost?

You can download Quirl for free and enjoy most of its features, although there are some limitations.

What is included with the free version vs. paid?

Quirl is a subscription-based app, but you can use many of its features for free in an advertisement-supported free version. Before you choose to upgrade to the grandly named epic tier, you can sample the extra benefits through a seven-day trial.

After the trial, a monthly, six-monthly, or yearly subscription raises every linked family member to epic status. Epic tier opens up the app’s full potential with unlimited custom rewards and access to more shops for kids’ rewards. 

Is Quirl app safe to use?

The free version of Quirl displays advertisements. Really, you should view the adsupported version of the app purely as an appraisal mechanism. If you feel that the app can positively contribute to your family life, a subscription will get you and your child the best experience and the one that this review of Quirl considers.

At first glance, you might feel that Quirl encourages kids to spend. There are, after all, many opportunities to visit on-line stores to spend their allowance. The marketplace is not unrestricted, and parents have granular control over what they allow within it. They can also require kids to explain how they intend to use gift-card purchases in an in-app note.

Parents can use tools in Quirl to nudge kids towards other reward types. For example, they can pledge to enhance any amounts kids choose to save over the long term rather than spend.

Quirl asks for user data and provides reasons for asking:

• Kids’ email address (optional)—to send progress emails.
• Kids’ dates of birth—to keep the content age-appropriate.
• Kid’s phone number (optional)—to send kids a download link.

Parent profiles have a password that must be entered when the app switches to them, but child profiles are not required to have an associated password. Kids can use the app to invite contacts to join them in quests.

Overall rating of the app.

There is a lot more to Quirl than you would expect to be possible in a chore-tracker app. It constantly surprises with its careful design. For every aspect where you feel that the app might not match your values or parenting approach, you’ll discover a feature or option to bring Quirl’s operation into line with what you want or expect. 

Quirl fulfils its primary purpose of helping kids track their responsibilities and rewards superbly, but it is the package around this that makes it such a well-rounded, innovative, and compelling app. Help your kids become organised and responsible and reward them how you see fit with this five-star app.