I'm the developer of WalkScape, the RuneScape inspired fitness MMORPG where you progress by walking IRL. We're now accepting more people to the Closed Beta!
I'm the developer of WalkScape, the RuneScape inspired fitness MMORPG where you progress by walking IRL. We're now accepting more people to the Closed Beta!
(EDIT: Some people asked, so I created a community for the game here too with some useful links on the pinned post: !walkscape@lemmy.world)
Hello there, Lemmy! It's been a while since I last posted here, and a lot has happened since!
First off, we're once again inviting new players to our third closed beta wave. If you're interested to give it a try, you can apply to the beta by following these instructions. If you feel like you want to support the development and want to gain access immediately, you can do so here.
I started this project more than two years ago as a hobby while studying Computer Science in the university. I have ADHD and finding motivation to be active is tricky, but gamification works really well for my dopamine craving brain. I first off tried the games on offer from Google Play, but they all either had horrendous monetisation (MTX, ads, or both) or were too distracting. Especially GPS games usually need you to have the game open all the time while you're trying to enjoy being outside and they also pose privacy concerns.
So that's when I started to think of what would do the trick for me, and combining my life long RuneScape addiction into fitness seemed like the obvious choice. And I'm happy to say that I've definitely been walking nearly three times as much this year compared to last year.
WalkScape in nutshell is a game where everything that happens in the game requires you to walk. So if you want to explore or travel to a location, want to chop some trees, or you want to craft stuff - everything needs steps. You set your character to do what you want, and then go for a walk. The game counts your steps even when it's closed, and you can open it ip when you're taking a break or back home to see your progress and maybe switch what you're doing.
The game doesn't use GPS, so you can walk on a treadmill. And it can track your steps when you don't have internet connection, and only when opening the game needs you to be connected.
Here's what we've added in the last three months since I last posted:
- Achievement system with almost 50 achievements. And an achievement rewards track, giving you unique items or cosmetics for your progress.
- Social features. You can add friends in the game and have your personal leaderboards with them.
- A new underwater realm (that has merfolk!) with a bunch of new locations, more than hundred new items, new crafting recipes, activities and more.
- Realm reputation system. You can become famous in any of the four fantasy realms we have now and gain rewards for doing so.
- Job boards & jobs. You can accept jobs that function as miniquests and gain rewards and reputation for completing those. These work as an item sink in preparation for player trading which is what we're working on next.
- Privacy features. These are all opt-out, so your steps and profile are hidden from others unless you specifically want them to be visible.
- And a lot more!
As always, I'm happy to answer to any questions or feedback you may have about the game. Also from last post, I know many users here might have GrapheneOS, and the game seems to be running on it fine if you run it sandboxed.
Keep walking, and stay hydrated! ❤️
Some pictures:
Edit: small errors and had the same picture listed twice
Edit 2: I created an official community for the game here on Lemmy !walkscape@lemmy.world after many people asked for it. For official development blogs, I still recommend to check WalkScape Portal as I can't promise we can post them here as well. But we'll see!
I've been in the closed beta since February and I can vouch for this game being awesome. It's been a great way to encourage me to take my dogs on walks and stay healthy. I definitely recommend checking it out.
To the dev, your game has motivated me to learn flutter/dart. I've been working with it for four months now and I'm getting close to finishing my first app, so thank you for the inspiration!
One of the things I hated about Pokemon Go was how taxing it was on the battery. It burned through my phone's ability to hold a charge in less than a year. If your game is constantly tracking steps, I expect it's constantly running. How does it manage power draw?
I love the concept. Thanks for sharing!
I never played RuneScape, but I did just delete Pikmin Bloom. What if players cheat their steps? How will you detect the difference between that, and a Pacific Crest Trail thruhiker who legitimately walks 60,000 steps day after day, and over 1,000,000 steps per month?
Anyway your game sounds cool. I had an idea for a one player game while I was hiking the PCT - kinda like the Oregon trail, or dope wars, but it would be a simulation of the Pacific Crest Trail and the steps would be 1:1. So you’d have to walk 7 million steps to beat the game, and obviously make decisions along the way about food and water, weather, resting, hitchhiking, etc. But there will be long stretches of the game where you just look at a new vista, or look at the location, eat food, camp.
Anyway the reason I’m commenting is I wanted to tell you why I quit playing a walking game. I quit after a backpacking trip of 7 days with no service. When I came back, the game had nothing to do for my ~150,000 steps. No confetti or prizes. If I was actually playing it for any achievements it would be a setback to be offline for 7 days.
So yeah, if you have any players of your game who do serious miles in one day, or one week, or whatever, you should pile on the rewards. Because at the end of the day that’s all I want out of a game like that. An automated micro-recognition that I kicked ass. So I can relax my tired legs and use all my hard earned digital loot.
Mildly interested. Concerned about monetization. I don't do subscriptions or microtransactions, and "pay once and you're good" is pretty rare, probably in part because there's ongoing costs to running a server and in part because lol most people will charge as much as possible. But that's why the only MMO I play is guild wars 2. You buy the game and you're good. They sell expansions every couple of years.
Also you should mention lemmy on your site where you mention discord and reddit.
As a person who hates phones, I love this game. I got accepted into the beta a week or two ago and having a game that doesn't require me to touch my phone all the time is my favorite thing.
The only thing that would make it better is integration with other smart device step counters. Being able to play (more like progress I guess) a phone game while not even carrying my phone would be hilarious. I am sure you're getting hounded by people about this non-stop.
Just signed up for the beta. I also have adhd and I was overweight for the majority of my life, and then in 2018-early2020, I went from 300ish to 160ish, and I felt great. Then the pandemic hit and I could no longer go on walks and runs and then I got depressed and then injured my leg permanently and now I'm back up to 235 and I fucking hate it but I can't seem to get the will to walk again. So this game sounds like it would be really fun.
I'm whole-heartedly impressed with what you are presenting here. I wish I'd seen your booth at gamescom, since I am sincerely excited by the non-predatory design philosophy you're describing in your blog posty on your website.
I have already set up an account and written an application. Hopefully I'll have the chance to try this out. :)
I love this and I haven't even used it yet! 😅
A few things:
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I love the idea of paying one-time to play offline, but it's not currently very possible to do in-app purchases on a ROM like GrapheneOS, which you mentioned in the post as being something users (myself included) have. Will there be a way to pay outside of the in-app purchase dialogue to get access? (i.e. donate through bmac, then link account to app temporarily to confirm) I'd definitely like more of my money to go to you, rather than a play store fee.
Additionally, will there be a direct APK download at all, or will it only be available through the Play Store? (obviously privacy-preserving frontends like the Aurora Store exist, but it's nice to have an APK download too 😊)
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Thank you for making privacy the default setting, while still letting users share more if they want to. This is something I always love to see!
I'd 100% sign up for the beta right now, but since my GrapheneOS phone doesn't have the ability to use the Play Store beta features, I'll hold off on that so I don't take someone's spot :)
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Put in my application for the beta last night, and grabbed Walker Patreon today :-)
I really love the vibes of this project, as someone who loves walking and needs to walk more, and someone who struggles with ADHD, and I've always loved RuneScape, this project calls to me haha.
I feel like my character was getting more exercise than me back then, I remember I used to spend a lot of time at the guild coal mine (with those bats), so much time that this is seared into my memory....
Welcome to RuneScape.You swing your pick at the rock.Really interested in this but would rather wait for a full release - just wanted to thank you for posting on Lemmy as well as Reddit. Everything about this project seems so sincere and I'm not used to that with new apps
RS fitness 💪
Wonder if there’s a way to optimize the original video so that it shows it higher resolution without much of a larger file size? Screen recording here
I've been playing since the last round of beta invites, and I love it. Everything's pretty intuitive so far, and I find myself moving around more to give me those steps. Can't wait to see what comes next!!
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I've been wanting a game like this for years!! As soon as Pokemon Go came out I thought it would be awesome to have a similar game that was offline or less Network dependent that modern AR games.
Like you level up and gain experience by walking around but you don't have to live in a city or busy area to play. You don't have to have the social element of say Pokemon Go or Wizards Unite to play and have fun.
The entire point is to have a game that ties the fun elements of gaming with the real world effects of exercise!
Thank you for this I'm excited to keep up with the progress 🙂Just got admitted to the closed beta a few weeks back and have been absolutely loving it :]
This is everything I want from a gamified step counter with none of the things I don’t want!
Looking forward to push notifications to help me remember to queue up the next activity when the last one is complete
Thank you so much for making this!
This is really cool! I just applied. I live in a moderate sized city, so I do walk a bit. I hope to help you out on the iOS side of things since lemmy is very android heavy.
I really think this will motivate me to walk more, as I really only walk to work and the store when necessary.
Right before I left my last job, we were looking at using Flutter to dual deploy our app so I’m excited to see it in use by an indie dev!
Brand new to Wave 3 and loving it so far. Still learning as I go, but gamifying walking is helping.
I just got admitted into the beta a few days ago. It's been really fun so far and has helped motivate me to walk every day. Do you have any guidance on what to do for the early game at the moment? Also I know you've addressed smart watch support is coming eventually. Is there an idea of when? I forget to bring my phone around with me at times.
Really dig it. Too bad I don't have the time to actually walk around and play this lol, otherwise it looks really fun.
I tried it out a while ago and didn't mesh with it at all. Like the options I had was gather things, minor crafting and traveling. But zero goals or combat (as far as I could tell at the beginning). So after going around, gathering and crafting a bit I got bored and gave up.
Hell, I even traveled around to just find if there are any encounters or places with more happening and I didn't find anything.
So it felt meaningless to grind with nothing to grind for.
Sounds interesting, I'll apply. I'm a QA engineer and tester, so if i get in i'll start complaining and suggesting :D
I haven't gotten into the Beta, so I haven't played it, but I'm curious, is the game designed so you can't do anything without walking, or is it so that you can creep along at a snail's pace without walking but to actually make real progress you have to walk?
It seems to me like you could use the psychology of a Pay To Win / Microtransactions game to motivate people but by using walking instead of money.
I created an official community for the game here on Lemmy !walkscape@lemmy.world after many people asked for it. For official development blogs, I still recommend to check WalkScape Portal as I can't promise we can post them here as well. But we'll see!
Any chance I could get in on the beta? I have some health concerns that has docs telling me I need to go for walks and I've had a hard time staying focused on it. (Applied in the portal )
Edit: if it doesn't happen, hopefully it is released soon. Also http://walkscape.app/home gives a 404. Removing the home seems to work out fine though
I love this game. Made the walks with my kid more fun and longer. The fact that I only have to check the game once or twice a day depending on what I am doing is perfect.
Suggestion: add other exercises. I can’t walk much because the impact is bad for my mangled knee, but biking is fine.
Booo, someone already stole my username :(
I've been using it for the last few weeks, applied at the last post and just got in. Right now there is basically nothing to do in the app. I've heard there are plans for combat that you can do in the app. But I'd love the option to plan your next things. Like a to-do list. There are jobs and I'd like to go and cut 214 Birch trees. Not more, not less. Currently I'm sitting at 17 stacks of birch logs (each 25) since I was walking for a long time without time for the app. I didn't need as many and it seems like my steps were wasted. I'm still super low level but there are items that are worth 0 copper, others are worth 1 copper and processing 2 of them (costing steps) results in an item worth 2 copper (wasted steps). However to get to another area I need 4.5k so that seems somehow punishing. Regardless of those nitpicks it is really nice, got me moving way more than I would have (started walking while on calls during work) it's definitely an incentive but I'd really like to plan my steps ahead. "Go here, gather x amount of an item, process said item or collect another..." You probably understand where I'm going otherwise shoot me a PM I love the game, recommend signing up and once I've seen a little more than walking cutting trees and then planks I would consider a one time purchase. (Or maybe a stylish shirt or cool tattoo only available through mtx. Once p2w is in I'm out