(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!
This is a an amazing concept! I created an account (same name as here). And tried to sign up for the beta, however the submit application button is not working for me. I’m using Firefox on android.
Huh, interesting. Could you send me the email you signed up with to contact@walkscape.app and at which point the beta application fails? Is it while you try to submit the fully written application, or even before that?
Emailed! It fails while trying to submit a fully written application.
Replied to you via email!
I got in a week or so ago and immediately started walking a ton more than usual. It was also great timing because I’m in Paris at the moment, so I’m walking so much every day and leveling up like crazy as a result.
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.
There will probably be an offline/ironman game mode that is a one time purchase
We don’t have an official community here (at least, not yet). And I’m quite hesitant to add one, as we already have our hands full with Discord, Reddit and WalkScape Portal communities.
When it comes to monetisation, the model we’ve planned is what seems both the fairest and most sustainable when compared to any other alternative, which is why I chose it as our plan. You can either buy it once to gain access to the offline “ironman” mode, or pay an affordable monthly subscription to play the online mode - both of which will be free to try out, so you’ll know if it’s worth your money before paying anything.
Going with single purchases only isn’t as sustainable for an online game. It’s much harder to keep it supported and expanding it long-term (and pay for servers) if we’re relying on single purchases, and it would tie us into needing to plan expansions that bring extra revenue to keep things running. By having an affordible subscription, we can keep content coming rapidly without needing to consider what kind of expansion pack and price tag do we need to put these new features behind, which I feel is much better from both game design and player perspective.
Microtransactions and ads are something I’ve clearly stated we’ll never be doing, as those also compromise game design and are predatory or come with privacy concerns.
You can either buy it once to gain access to the offline “ironman” mod
This sounds relevant to my interests. What updates come with this? Just security? Nothing?
We’re planning that it’ll receive the same updates as the main game itself and all of the features (that work offline). Expansions to the game world might come at a small price so you can enter those, but other than those my current plan isn’t to restrict features, new skills or content additions to existing regions in any way in the offline version.
Also, offline version will include cloud saving so there’s no risk of losing your progress if the device is lost. It’ll cloud save when it has connection periodically while mostly keeping everything on a local save.
That sounds pretty similar to how I like Guild Wars 2, except offline. That’s cool. I signed up for the beta thing.
Thank you so much! I hope you’ll enjoy it!
I really like the thoughts put into the game. However, I personally think, that micro transactions aren’t necessarily a bad thing, if you do them right. As an example for this I would call Helldiver’s. You can pay to get faster progress, but it isn’t necessary by any means. You can unlock everything with a reasonable amount of grinding.
But this game is tied to fitness and also has competitive elements to it. Imagine you can buy yourself faster progress here, when it’s all tied to physical activity. It would completely ruin the game and any competitive aspects in it, and devalue the feeling of achieving things in it, if players with bigger wallets gain advantage. When there’s only an affordable subscription, there’s a ceiling to spending and no one can gain unfair advantage by paying more than others.
Microtransactions overall pretty much always compromise game design. Games usually make the grind or progress much slower than what would be actually good to drive the purchases of MTX.
I’m also personally very against MTX and ads, I think they’re the worst invention in gaming and I hate when game design is now revolving around what kind of mechanics can make people open their wallets as often as possible instead of what’s fun and cool.
I’m really glad to have found a fitness app made by someone with the exact same opinion as me on app monetization. I’ve been using the app since March and will happily pay for the subscription. I’m really happy to see this openness, and the fact that you still repeat this promise.
Thank you! The very first post I ever posted to r/WalkScape covers this and I promised that there will be no ads and no MTX, and we’re going to keep what we’ve promised. That’s also why I’ve turned down every investor and publisher, as those could compromise this by having a stake at the company.
I agree with your ideas on micro transactions here. They create a lot of temptations to make the base game worse. “Your inventory holds 12 items but for a very reasonable price you can hold 6 more!” may seem harmless but it also sucks. The game is objectively and arbitrarily worse without that transaction.
Purely cosmetic skins are a little better, but you end up taking advantage of people who buy more than they should.
Exactly my thoughts! I was just approached at Gamescom by somebody who was pitching me to put limits to the inventory in order to sell expanded inventory space. He said it’s cool, as it’s just selling “utility” to the player. I think it’s designing your game to be annoying so people would pay more for it, and I like to put game design over anything else. As a game developer, I’m proud of designing things well and would feel disgusted by intentionally designing crap just to make more money.
Also I think the best cosmetics in games are those you earn through gameplay, which is why all of the cosmetics (which there are a lot in WalkScape) are earned by putting hard work inside the game. And also the players are proud to put the rare cosmetics on their characters to flex that they’ve achieved something. I think that’s a lot more cool than just being able to pay real money for it.
Not to even talk about what you just mentioned here. All kinds of MTX, be it cosmetics only, really take advantage of people who can’t limit their spending. They’ll pay a lot more than they should and it encourages unhealthy spending habits.
But this game is tied to fitness and also has competitive elements to it. Imagine you can buy yourself faster progress here, when it’s all tied to physical activity. It would completely ruin the game and any competitive aspects in it
Okay, you got a point there. Can’t argue against this.
I’ve been using this for about 3 months. I would estimate that my dog walks are now about twice as long as they used to be. I don’t really enjoy walking, but this gives me just enough incentive to do it everyday and, if I feel like taking a shortcut, taking the long way instead.
Thank you! And awesome to hear it, your dogs must be enjoying it as well! ❤️
I remember seeing this when I still used reddit, but forgot about it since then. Thanks for posting on Lemmy too! Signed up for the Beta
Thanks, and no problem! Reception here has been awesome for the project. I also actually developed my own Reddit alternative just for the game, which is the WalkScape Portal
Really dig it. Too bad I don’t have the time to actually walk around and play this lol, otherwise it looks really fun.
Total level 443 so far and while the core loop was already good the new content has really elevated the experience
Thank you! The feedback we’ve received about the most recent content update has been awesome to read, and I think it’s given us some great ideas on how to go forward with next content updates!
And 443 is awesome, I assume you’ve been leveling most of the skills? :D I’m still at 349 as I’ve been mostly grinding agility.
Yeah most of my skills are in the 40’s aside from fishing and foraging from lots of magnet fishing
This looks awesome!
Does it track steps from a smartwatch? I usually don’t carry my mobile when I’m out hiking and wouldn’t want to lose out on any progress in-game.
Currently no, but it’s the most frequently asked feature and planned to be added. Google decided to kill Google Fit APIs, which delayed our efforts on that front for a while as they replaced those with Health Connect that isn’t working too well at the moment, but hopefully will be fixed by Google soon.
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!
Our next update (Quality of Life) exactly aims to iron out most of the kinks remaining in the core loop. So being able to queue starting an activity after traveling, equipping saved gear presets, being able to organize bank & inventory, push notifications (that are opt-in and customizable) and cleaning UI stuff where it’s been reported confusing for some.
We’re aiming for this to ship in the next couple of months along with some content additions. Thank you so much ❤️
This sounds amazing, I’ve been playing for a couple of months & really enjoying it. Having never played RuneScape or anything like it, it’s been quite a learning curve, but it’s all very chill so you don’t feel bad if it takes a while to spot a certain feature or remember where a certain screen was in the sprawling menu system (which is fairly easy to use once you get used to it).
In the first few days/week I found I needed to interact while on walks to make the most of the short step requirements for early activities, but that soon levelled out, & the walk buffer with 2x multiplier is a really nice touch. Every few days/week I try to leave it on idle to build back the buffer, then everything feels relatively quick to progress for the next few days.
Really awesome work & look forward to the upcoming updates whenever they arrive. Big thanks to you & the team!
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
There will be no MTX or P2W!
And there are quite a lot of things to do in the game already. I recommend to explore the starting area, and there’s nothing stopping you from planning things you want to do. If you’re feeling a little bit lost (which I totally get, the game is still lacking a proper tutorial and starting quests) I recommend to check the wiki. There are guides there also how to make money. The NPCs don’t pay pretty much anything for early game unprocessed materials, but there are several ways of gaining coins. You can also get past the Fort of Permafrost by going under water and skipping paying for the toll entirely, for which you’ll need to find Diving Gear.
Thanks for the feedback! ❤️
Have you thought about putting in a scheduling system? Like being able to queue up a bunch of stuff to do? Then the game telling you the # of steps required and then you can go on about your day?
Yes! A limited queue system and notifications are both planned to be added in the next update.
Awesome!!!
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.
There’s no progress without walking, all of the progress is tied to steps.
I dont have Google play store. Can I still join?
As far as I know, it’s possible somehow. We currently don’t have enough resources to manage additional release pipelines, so it’s definitely tricky at the moment.
I understand. I mean, i can get the apk but if it requires Google Account for activation then it wont work on degoogled phones.
Recording API is local only and doesn’t require a Google account
Thanks! So I pay a tier and gett aceess? 😁
For immediate access that’s the way, or you can also apply for the closed beta for free
I’m playing this from this June I think, and it’s really a great game. Keep up the good work!
Thank you! There are a lot we’re planning to release during the next few months ❤️
Fantastic concept. I agree that most of the other apps are either super monetized or too “in app” like a Pokemkon GO, or they’re just boring and don’t offer much.
This looks like something fun, motivating, and really well made.
Thank you! And I definitely know the feeling of “being boring and don’t offer much”. That’s what I also got from many of the fitness games out there - I felt the games were way too casual to offer long-term motivation. If I’m collecting stuff for the sake of just collecting, there’s not enough to keep me hooked.
We’re trying here to keep it quite casual friendly by that the complexity reveals itself slowly. But I also think that complexity often for people comes from controls and such - here the input being just walking already lowers the bar a lot.
The combat that’s coming to the game I think really is the final missing piece, as then all of the hard grind you’ve done also ties to combat progression. Making the perfect combat build to beat a boss with your hard earned steps!
I just got my access to the closed beta and fired it up today. Even the initial setup, character customization, story intro, and tutorials are top notch. I feel pretty excited to get this started, more than I’ve felt about a game in awhile. Looking forward to the experience and contributing to the feedback where I can.
This seems super fun! I’d definitely check it out
Thanks! I hope you’ll enjoy it
