Prop the phone against something and drop down. The camera watches your form, counts the rep, and the rep is the attack.

Every gamified fitness app eventually has the same failure: somewhere there is a button, and the button is faster than the exercise. Pushup RPG removes the button. On-device pose detection watches you through the front camera, counts push-ups and squats in real time, and each counted rep deals damage. There is no tap-to-progress, no idle timer, no honour-system “I did 20”. The only route through the campaign is the floor.

The design decision that makes it a game rather than a rep counter is stated in the App Store listing and is worth quoting: gear “boosts your rewards, never your reps.” You can equip, upgrade, reforge and salvage loot from Common to Mythic, and none of it lowers the physical price of the next fight — it only changes what you get for paying it. That single rule is the difference between a fitness game and a game with a fitness theme.

There is a full campaign: eight biomes from the Sunlit Meadow to the Astral Gate, 48 hand-built enemies each carrying a rule badge that changes how its fight plays, bosses that shift stance mid-battle, and a roguelike Endless Descent you can push deeper or bank. Squats run the whole thing too, on their own records and their own leaderboard, so leg day is not a consolation mode.

The best feature is the duel, and it is a genuinely strange thing to watch. Forty seconds, two phones, two cameras, and a tug-of-war rope on screen that moves with every rep either of you does. No opponent to hand? Fight a rival with a visible fixed pace, or enter the Arena and get matched at yours — no chat, no messages, report or block straight from the result card. A guild’s shared weekly boss scales its health to the guild’s size and only camera-verified reps chip it.

Free, rated 4+, 46.9 MB, iOS 17 and later, English only, from a solo developer, Yerasyl Amanbek. Shipped 25 June 2026 and already at version 2.4.2, with a 4.8 average from over 700 ratings. The one thing to know before installing is that it needs a phone propped at floor level and a few square metres of room — the counting is honest, which means bad reps do not count, which is the whole point and also the reason it will feel harder than the app you deleted.