Hello!
First off, I’ve struggled to exercise, and I also have ADHD. Gamifying exercise works really well for my dopamine-craving brain, but I’m also easily distracted, so the current mobile fitness games on the market didn’t really work for me. That’s how I came up with this idea.
Here are some info about the game and how it’s different from Pokemon Go for example:
- no distractions. I love games that value my time. WalkScape is designed so that it encourages you not to open it while you’re walking, but afterwards. And even if you open it while walking, changing things in the game is super quick.
- no GPS. So you can walk where ever you want. The game tracks your steps even without an internet connection, but you need a connection when you open the game.
- no ads, no MTX. I hate predatory monetisation practises, and they encourage unhealthy spending habits. This game is about both mental and physical health.
In the game, you explore and work in different skills such as woodcutting, foraging, fishing and crafting by walking in real life. The game uses your phone’s pedometer to track your progress. It’s also online, so you can work with your friends towards common goals without needing to be physically in the same location.
The game has dozens of locations, hundreds of items, NPCs, shops and more is coming as I work towards the full release of the game. There’s a lot of different unique and cute activities in the game you can set your character to do in addition to the typical woodcutting and mining, like volunteering in soup kitchen or helping locals repairing their boats. All fueled by walking IRL.
If you feel like you’d like to try it out, you can either apply to the closed beta (we’re inviting more people right now) or if you like to support the development, you get instant to access through Patreon or Buy me a Coffee to start playing. The game is completely community funded.
Whether you decide to support or apply to the closed beta, you’ll need to sign up at WalkScape Portal to the game and then apply or connect your Patreon on the account page.
You can also check our this video to hear me and the artist explain more about the game: Youtube introduction video
Or you can visit the website.
We also have my devblogs released every two weeks available at https://portal.walkscape.app/development
It’s been a wild journey for me growing this thing from my personal hobby project, and awesome to see the game helping so many people to exercise more. I’ll answer any questions you might have in the comments!
Stay hydrated, and keep walking ❤️
I was just looking for a game like this earlier today. This is perfect!
Thank you so much <3!
I looks wonderful!
I am a Pogo player and I hate having to stay looking at the phone, under the rain or with cold hands or bloody sun 😂
You write “no mtx, no ads”. How do you plan to monetize your app ? Will it be a one time payment or with DLCs?
Free to play so you can first try it out before making a purchase decision. Then you can either play it single player with single purchase, or if you want to play it online it’s affordable subscription. This is the least predatory way of doing monetization that in my mind works great both for the players and makes sure we can support the game for long.
And thank you!
Will be there a way to purchase or subscribe outside of Google Play? Or even use the game without google services?
Probably. I’m not too keen on paying the 30% Google Play tax anyhow, as that cost would fall to be paid by the players with increased subscription cost. I want to keep the subscription as affordable as possible. I’ll try my best to find ways around it, probably easy enough on Google Play but might prove to be more difficult on AppStore.
Edit: and even as of now, the game requires no Google Services. I’m doing my best to keep it that way.
This looks really cool!
Sounds really cool! Unfortunately can’t currently help you out financially since I’m crunching to finish my study, but applied on the site anyways. Either way, really cool project and hope to see more of it, good luck!
If you’re interested, apply to the beta through the website! You’ll get access eventually through that ❤️
This looks super neat! Love the theme that you’ve chosen for this game, everything from the UI and graphical choices looks very good imo. Got a few questions im curious about;
- Do you use Google Services Framework for this game to work? I know there are quite a few lemmies who use Graphene OS as their OS on Pixel phones, where some of them might not want to have this installed, (Not that im one of them).
- You write that the game is kind of designed to be opened after the walk, but can be opened while walking. Are there any benefits/features/activities for the user while walking? Such as in Pokemon Go, you stop every now and then to fetch Pokemon. Or does this app kind of encourage not to use it while walking?
- Will the game be open source? Will people be able to download it on F-droid? Or will this be strictly published on Play Store + App Store?
- Will there be any implementations against people who try to spoof their locations to gain “steps” easily? As low as this is, people will always do it to see their name at the top of the leader-board
I very much look forward to seeing this game come to life, I will definitely be keeping a keen eye the next few days! 🌻
Not the OP but
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- It seems like there is not much to do while walking that cannot be done after, so that the app does not enclurage opening it while walking.
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- Did you miss the part where the description states that the app uses the phone’s pedometer and not location?
On 4, this just changes the question to spoofing the pedometer value rather than spoofing the location. Which makes it worse, because that’s much harder to detect.
Well yeah hit that is hpw it seems to he from the description given
Regarding 4. I wasnt quite sure wether he meant that it woudl work with both location and not location on, kind of a use as you want. I have no idea how these things work really so thought it be better to ask. But if that is the case then good. Although another comment here seemed to have stated its easier to spoof…🙁
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Thank you so much for the questions, I’ll answer them as best as I can:
I have intentionally built everything without relying on any Google service. We have couple of players with de-googled phones and the game works great. Worth noting is that when we add smart watch integration through Google Fit, that wouldn’t work. We might later on build support for Garmin Connect too, but it’s still a bit out of scope. But just using your phone to count steps already works with de-googled phones.
Worth noting is though that the closed beta is distributed via Google Play closed testing, but it’s possible to get around that as some other players have.
No, no activities like that you would need to do while walking. If you need to open it during your walk, it’s mostly changing what you’re doing in the game.
All planned active gameplay components are designed so that they’ll be something you play after the walk at your home.
If there’s demand for more “active walking” gameplay, we might implement something for that later on. But for now, we encourage to keep it closed when you walk, and that’s something a lot of players love about it, myself included.
No open sourcing planned. I have released some related stuff open source (like the character creation tool), but not the game or the server tech I’ve built. I have made my own game engine for it, and I feel like if I released it open source I would have to compete against clones of the game I’ve worked so hard to make, so not really keen on doing that.
Just Google Play and App Store for now, I might be releasing it on other app stores later on, but the publishing pipeline for it even now is quite a complex one for a single dev, and I’m not keen to make it even more so.
Yes! I replied to the other comment with the same question in more details if you’re interested reading it.
And thank you so much, hopefully this answered your questions! ❤️
Thanks for detailed response, and yeah absolutely answered my questions.
- Good to know, thanks.
- I think this is a good thing myself! (not having people constantly looking at their phones while walking, rather enjoying whats around them). I would defo vouch for this selling point.
- Completely understand - was only asking out of curiosity.
Have a great rest of your day, i very much look forward to checking this game out! 🌻
My pleasure, have a great day as well! ❤️
As someone who got into the closed beta a few days ago it is a fantastic motivator to get moving.
Absolutely love the artwork and the parts of the world I’ve seen so far.
Keep up the great work schamppu and team!
Thank you so much Synapsisdos. We will 🫡 Have fun walking!
… And stay hydrated?
Always :D I’ve been stuck to use that after I won an award with the game quite surprisingly and did a relatively cringy speech:
Onnittelut! :D
It’s a great signoff, though. :P
Sold 👀
Since this is an MMORPG, how so you prevent cheating? Since this works offline, what prevents someone from faking the steps count and reporting to the game that they totally made 50000 steps while the phone was offline for 24 hours?
Looks amazing! But this was my main worry here.
Yeah, we need to know that when you finally add HCIM mode and someone reaches 200m with all skills -4,600,000,000 steps- it was entirely legit.
Haha, agreed! Replied to the OP with more details, we have this planned out and will do the best we can.
We’re developing an anti-cheat, and have quite good plan how to deal with it. Obviously every MMO always has cheaters, but the great thing about WalkScape is that there’s just one input to the game (your steps) which makes monitoring a lot easier.
We’re already tracking the steps server side and getting some data to implement a version of the anti-cheat during closed beta, and then testing it out in our separate server with people who want to try cheating in order to perfect it before we go open beta. It’s something we’re committed to improve, and I’ll do the best coding wizardry that I can.
My bottom line is that we probably can never catch every cheater, but as long as we can catch those who would ruin the economy or competition, it’s not going to ruin the game for others. And I’ll of course aim higher than that, but trying to stay realistic as this is an indie game and I don’t have the resources to hire 20 people to work on anti-cheat.
Sounds good! Thanks for the answer
What do you mean you’re tracking the steps server side? I thought they came from the phone’s pedometer
I’m really interested!!! Unfortunately I keep getting an ‘invalid credentials’ notification after clicking the link to verify. I’ve tried to reset the password but still can’t get in. I’m happy to send a donation, but want to make sure it’s linked to an account.
Do you have a character limit? I also can’t show the password while trying to log in to verify it was inserted correctly. I’ve tried both with and without special characters and am using iOS ‘suggest a password’ feature if that helps at all.
I’ll be trying again in the morning to see if goes through as I can totally understand there being a delay in verification.
Doesn’t have a character limit.
If the problem persist, contact me on contact@walkscape.app and I’ll sort it out for you!
Also remember the verify email confusingly has two links in it, you want to click the verify link.
Sorry for the inconvenience, I’ll try to find time to improve Portal at some point ❤️
Hello fellow developer with ADHD! This sounds perfect, exactly what I’ve been searching for. Most apps were not gamified enough, or quickly devolved into some manipulative microtransaction slot machine.
I’ve signed up as monthly supporter and am now eagerly awaiting access to the beta :) Can’t wait to try it.Thank you so much, and hopefully the game helps you out as well! It has tricked my brain so that my average daily steps have gone from around 3k to 10k+ now.
Happy walking and remember to stay hydrated! ❤️
Thank you! Yay, I just got access :)
Joined the closed beta yesterday and the game seems very nice,however I’m not sure how the step counter works. In Statistics,at least , they are way off,by thousands of steps.
Edit: typo
@hornedfiend @schamppu I think the game is set to medium sensitivity, or Low. There are some fitness apps with a sensitivity setting, and if you place it high, it is more accurate. The problem arises if you’re just moving your phone, since it’s high sensitivity, it counts those as steps. So, most apps have it at medium or Low. That’s my guest at least.
Wonder if it would be good to add a “actively walking” mode that’s in a convenient place and just turns up the sensitivity for a while
@trashgirlfriend I remembered, #Walkr, a space gamification fitness app, have an option to “boost” steps when you’re about to go on a long walk/run/jumping rope session. You can use it once every 24 hours only (and only lasts for 2 hours IIRC).
I think, now that you suggested it, that was maybe their solution to keeping the sensitivity fixed for their game, but giving users a chance to earn more if they’re about to engage in a long session.
🤔
@trashgirlfriend Ooh. I like that! It could be a widget too for easy access.
This is a neat idea. I never exercised more than when I played Pokemon Go.
Signed up and already find myself adding extra ways to my day to get steps, the gamification works!
Is there a Lemmy community to discuss this with other scapers?
Not yet, we have a fairly active one over Reddit. I’ll need to consider opening one here as well!
Definitely trying this one out. I’ve been a daily POGO player since launch because it gets me outside walking around. I liked how Pikmin Bloom had the passive pedometer angle, but it also had to constantly check GPS, so it was a battery hog.
I’d definitely benefit from Google Fit integration since I like to use the elliptical while wearing my watch. But I’d still get plenty of distance with just pedometer. Least of which because I’ll already be playing POGO.
If only Blizzard hadn’t shit the bed, you could have called it World of WalkCraft.
