I made this to get my ADHD brain to study with great success. Hope other people find it useful as well.

Gamified Leveling — Turn your Anki habit into a study adventure

Gamified Leveling adds a calm, game-inspired layer to Anki without changing how spaced repetition works. Every review contributes to a visible journey: earn XP, level up your hero, build combos, complete daily quests, unlock badges, and see the progress that your ordinary reviews are already creating.

It is designed for learners who enjoy a little momentum and celebration, but still want the cards and scheduling to remain unmistakably Anki.

What happens while you study

Answer cards as usual, and Gamified Leveling awards XP for each rating: Again 2 XP, Hard 5 XP, Good 10 XP, and Easy 15 XP. An animated XP bar and level-up celebration make longer-term consistency feel tangible. Correct answers also build a combo, with on-screen feedback and optional milestone sounds.

Daily quests give each day a small, realistic direction. They are chosen from your actual workload and can include due reviews, a focus session, a streak target, mature-card recall, catching up on a backlog, strengthening a weaker deck, or exploring a different deck. Complete quests for bonus XP; completing two or all three brings an additional bonus.

A progression system built around real study

• Levels and hero: Your Shadow Scholar evolves through new titles and forms as you level. Rename your hero or add your own level-based PNG art styles.
• Skill tree: Leveling earns skill points. Spend them across six paths—Scholar, Sprinter, Guardian, Cartographer, Archivist, and Monk—to shape the kind of study journey you enjoy. Skills can support recovery combos, focused sessions, deck exploration, card creation, quest routing, and mastery tracking.
• Deck mastery: Each deck has independent progress and moves from Rookie to Veteran, Master, Elite, Grandmaster, and Legend. Parent decks also benefit when you study a child deck, so nested collections remain meaningful.

• Badges: Earn achievements for consistency, recall, focus, streaks, combos, speed, deck exploration, and clearing due cards. A gallery in the deck browser shows what you have unlocked and what remains.

• Mastery view: A compact retention HUD focuses on mature cards (21-day-or-longer intervals), so it reflects long-term recall rather than first-exposure churn. It also shows recent momentum and the next mastery rank.

• Personal bests: The add-on recognizes meaningful records such as stronger recall, longer focus, and improved study performance.

Made to encourage, not pressure

Gamified Leveling rewards useful behavior: reviewing due cards, returning consistently, building focused sessions, remembering mature material, and improving difficult cards. Daily quest targets are based on your recent capacity, so the add-on aims to give you a nudge rather than demand an unrealistic grind.

Your Anki scheduling and cards are not replaced. Gamified Leveling is a motivational companion that records its own progression alongside your normal reviewing.

Where to find things

After installation, review normally—HUDs appear automatically in the reviewer. Open Tools → Gamified Leveling to check quest status, open Paths of Study, customize your hero, test the level-up effect, or reset the add-on’s progression.

The badge gallery and deck-progression panel appear in Anki’s deck browser/overview. All progression starts fresh when the add-on is installed.

Sound and visual customization

Celebration sounds are included for levels, badges, quests, skills, combos, and personal bests. Short navigation, card, and interface sounds can be enabled or adjusted in config.json; their volume is configurable and individual cues can be disabled. Gamified Leveling deliberately does not play a sound for Again, Hard, Good, or Easy, so it can coexist cleanly with a separate answer-sound add-on.

To use custom hero art, put PNGs in the add-on’s user/heroes folder using this pattern:

shadow_scholar_STYLE_lvLEVEL.png

For example, shadow_scholar_default_lv5.png or shadow_scholar_venom_lv12.png. The add-on automatically displays the strongest image available for your current level.

Requirements

• Anki 24.11 or newer
• No account, internet connection, or external service required

Study steadily. Let the progress be visible.