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: ![email protected])
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 ![email protected] 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!
Woah, thank you so much ❤️
Awesome to hear that the game has inspired you to learn Dart & Flutter. Dart is an awesome language, and Flutter is versatile and easy tool for making some great looking UIs! But even more so, it always warms my heart to hear that the game has a positive impact on people's lives. Keep it up, and thank you again!
This is super cool! I'm in a position right now where I have to walk my dog a few times a day. I'd love to chip in, but I just don't have anything to spare right now. I'm gonna sign up for the beta and cross my fingers. Thank you for making this
Thank you! We're accepting people who've applied to the Closed Beta throughout the wave, so there's a good chance you'll gain access! The wave ends on October 6th.
We've got a lot of pictures of happy doggos on the Discord :D I have cats that I walk sometimes, but they're not as effective from XP gain perspective.
Edit: and just to clarify here, access gained during any point of Closed Beta stays until Open Beta when everyone can start playing it. Open Beta is planned for next year.
I just sent in my application. My partner is filling one out too. I look forward to trying this. Thank you for the information
No problem, thank you and your partner for signing up and being awesome! ❤️
We made it in! I chopped my first wood lol. I am liking the look of everything. This will make walking the dog less of a chore, and more fun. Thank you again
Haha, fresh feet to the game! Welcome, and I hope you enjoy it. Have fun walking, and remember to stay hydrated ❤️
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.
Thank you so much! The current tutorial is just a placeholder, and not really that finished but I tried to make that nice looking and informative as well. Happy walking, and glad you're liking it ❤️
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! ❤️
Last time I applied, it took like 6 months for my beta app to be accepted. That's fine but I had ran a marathon like the week before, and did all my marathon training during that time. Was big sad. Anyways best of luck with the next round!
We've been accepting thousands of applications each wave, so it sounds like you've been terribly unlucky if it took you that long. Sorry to hear that. We're also accepting applications during this wave all the way until October 6th, so nee applicants have a good chance on getting accepted!
I joined in the last beta wave because of your post here on lemmy. Big fan! Personally I’m looking forward to combat features most of all but the pace of development seems strong regardless and I’m enjoying all the new content.
Thank you! After the next update (Quality of Life) I'm moving to work on combat system. It'll be a longer development process, so before the next update I'm also polishing our development tools so the other members of the team can create content updates with ease while I'm busy with combat. We're aiming to avoid having lengthier periods of time without fresh stuff.
Thanks for all your work and the transparency throughout, I’m excited to keep supporting the project 😀
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!
Battery drain is almost nothing. The game doesn't need to be opened when you walk, and you can kill it entirely. The pedometer is anyways running on most phones regardless if you have WalkScape installed or not, so this doesn't add battery consumption in that sense either.
For me when I just checked, it's used less than 0.3% today which is less than most other apps I have installed. I've tried my best to keep this as low as possible, and we'll probably be optimizing this even further in the future if necessary.
Been playing this for a couple of months and I can say that the battery drain is next to nothing in my experience. No need to keep the app open to track steps.
Just checked ok my android (stock android running on an old One Plus Nord) and it's about 25th on the batter usage list and only used 0.34% of batter, which is less then the app i only need to sign in to my work accounts a few times a day. So atleast in my use it's so tiny i never even noticed it.
It gets the step count from the device itself so it does not need to be running at all times to track it. I think it just keeps track of what the number was the last time you opened it and what the number is the next time you open it and it awards you the difference.
If the accelerometer is running, it's drawing power, but perhaps that can be done efficiently on some devices.
The sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, etc.) are anyways already running on the majority of devices, so WalkScape doesn't really add to that. The only times it does draw power is when you boot it up and use it. But even that draws very little power - I've developed my own game engine on top of Flutter, which is an SDK to build apps and is very battery friendly out of the box!
It would be neat if it could pull step count logs from fitness devices and watches so it didn't even necessarily need to be running while you're doing your walk.
I think it uses the step counter service on your phone. It does not need to be running in the background.
^ Yup, the game doesn't need to be opened for it to count steps. You can kill the game entirely and open it when you want to, and the steps will load!
This is on our to-do!
We would've likely implemented it already, but Google is in the process of killing Google Fit API and replacing it with Health Connect. Health Connect, as of now, is kinda terrible. So we're waiting for Google to fix their APIs.
I've tried my best as indie developer to hurry them :D Last week I was at Gamescom and managed to meet with a director from Google, and asked to connect me with Health Connect team so I can tell them what's broken and maybe have some insight on when stuff is about to get fixed.
When it comes to Apple, there's no problem with this. But we want to release wearable support to both platform simultaneously.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Okay, you got a point there. Can't argue against this.
There will probably be an offline/ironman game mode that is a one time purchase
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.
We already have an anti-cheat in the game and it's being developed further, although not exactly a priority at this point of Closed Beta. But it's shown great promise of detecting cheating. In can't disclose how it's working, as that would make circumventing it easier.
There are already a bunch of activities in game that have been designed for people who hike and gain a lot of steps during it and don't have service. Also, the offline game mode will not require service at all, so it's possible to manage it even while hiking. In addition to the current activities, we also have special "Adventures" planned that can take tens of thousands of steps without needing to open the game.
Combat system also will pretty much work as "piling up the rewards" in addition to the core gameplay. You gain combat points for each step you take, and there will be a large cap to those. Then you can play the combat system and spend those points and gain a ton of combat progress fast if you've got a lot of points saved up.
Thank you for the feedback!
Sounds good, best wishes bringing your game into cash flow. If you inspire others to be more active, you’ve already done a lot of good in the world.
Thank you ❤️
It's been awesome to hear from our current players that the game has been helpful and has already made an impact.
Offline mode will launch when we go to open beta. During Closed Beta, there's only the online mode (as that's what needs the most testing).
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.
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. :)
Thank you so much! We're accepting new people throughout the wave, so until October 6th!
Edit: and I will be at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki if you're attending, come say hi if you swing by!
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.
Thank you so much!
Depending on how the legislations now post-DMA go, it might be possible to also handle payments throughout our Portal instead of app stores. The app stores, especially Apple's, has still a bunch of rules in their ToS about this where they might remove the game entirely if you're not using their payment system. Android is slightly more lenient on this regard though.
The cuts Patreon already takes (a whopping 14% in total, after which we then play VAT) already affects us enough that I would definitely love to rather have my own systems, but also they offer a lot of convenience to the users that we couldn't at this point.
But overall it would be great if we could provide a direct payment system straight from Portal, as we could price that one also significantly cheaper than using Google's or Apple's systems when we don't need to pay their cuts. It's something I really want to do to be able to make the pricing as affordable as possible, and everything depends on if it's both feasible and allowed by the app stores. But can't promise this, as there are a lot of factors in play whether it's feasible to provide our own systems and if it's allowed by the biggest stores.
When it comes to direct APK downloads, maybe if we can get a good pipeline for those. I think the most realistic option is that we'll pick the one for an "extra release pipeline" that we can automate most easily to our current systems. Could be Aurora Store, F-Droid or some other depending on what kind of automation options they offer.
So F-Droid can take a github repo as source? If that's the case, I could consider it much sooner than I originally thought
Oh yeah, I wanted to recommend an f-droid release as well, but thought you had to open your source up for that.
I hadn't thought of making your own repository where you don't have to do that \o/
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
I can trim those shoes of yours if you like. 100% legit, my dad works at Jagex
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.Thank you so much for the kind words and for the support, and also sounds like the game is right up in your alley!
I also spent a lot of time back in like 2006 in Falador coal mines. Maybe it's true that the kids yearn for the mines :D
I signed up after seeing your last post. I made it into the last wave of invites and have been playing since last week. This game is really cool and I don't think there is anything else like it.
Thank you so much!
I think why this game is so unique is that it's origins are a hobby project and come from my sentiment of creating a fitness game that fixes what the others fail at. Rarely anyone makes indie games for mobile, and I've been called a bunch of names for attempting making an indie game to the mobile platform by other devs. But so far things are looking great, and I'm hoping that the mobile game industry would have more indie games.
Maybe with DMA we could start seeing more, as the biggest hurdle are the app stores and how they're made to only favour games with big budgets.
I agree with everything you said, only that I'm not quite sure what DMA is.
I want more indie games on my phone because the major mobile app developers are beyond trash at this point. I love indie devs, I love FOSS and indie games. I prefer programming that lends itself to democratizing the web and my devices.
Your game is a breath of freedom right now in the mobile marketplace. I made it in on the free invite system, but the fact that you are on the fediverse talking to me, coupled with the fact that your game and end goal seam awesome, I'm going to figure out how to become a donating member as soon as I get home.
I'm out on a night walk right now with my walkscape app open, while typing this reply. Amazing times.
Thank you so much! And I'm a huge fan of both indie & FOSS too.
DMA (Digital Markets Act) is a new EU legislation that came into effect just few months ago. It forced both Apple and Google to allow third party app stores and change their ToS (I think in EU only). Apple even had to lower their "developer tax" when it comes to payments from 30% to just 12% in EU. It's good progress, especially if we start seeing competing app stores (I think Epic had plans for that). But even if the app stores open up for smaller studios, there's still a lot of convincing needed until gamers start considering that mobile games can be good too, and not only match-3 gacha crap. And the big studios never want to innovate, they'll keep making games that they think are safe bets to generate maximum profits.
Maybe Valve could now expand to having a mobile game store? :D
Tossed $6 your way on Buy Me A Coffee yesterday!
Excited to get into the beta
Cheers, and thank you for supporting the developmemt! Remember to link your BMAC to your WalkScape account and you'll get access! ❤️
The game looks great! I really like that you don't rely on GPS, because of privacy.
Thank you! Privacy is definitely the biggest concern, but also GPS requires apps to be opened to register anything, and it kills the battery quite quickly (and requires active internet connection).
Does GPS really require an internet connection? I know it uses the radio, which kills the battery, but AFAIK you can get GPS without Internet access. For example, I've downloaded offline areas for Google Maps and have tracked my location that way, while traveling in countries where I didn't have a SIM allowing me to access the Internet.
Not necessarily, but in order to use map data, you'll pretty much need it. This is why all of the GPS games require a connection, as they'll download map data and cache your current surrounding areas
By the way, I got such a good impression that I became a BMAC contributor, looking forward to testing it!
Thank you so much for supporting the development! You should've received an email that has instructions to link your BMAC on your account page. When you link your account there, you should receive download instructions either almost immediately (sometimes might take couple of hours for our automated system, but usually faster).
Happy walking, and remember to stay hydrated ❤️
I have the game installed now 😀 I like that all steps go towards a goal of some sort.
Found a tiny typo with the name for one of the hairstyles. If you search through your codebase for "adn bun" you will find it. Its probably supposed to say "and bun" 😊
Thanks for letting me know, and welcome! ❤️
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
I just signed up! This looks great!
Thank you so much, I hope you'll enjoy it!
I finally got in!! Very exciting
Congratulations, and welcome! Have fun walking and remember to stay hydrated ❤️
o7
This seems super fun! I'd definitely check it out
Thanks! I hope you'll enjoy it
So I've made an account, but clicking the verification link just takes me to the home page, where upon trying to log in I get the error message about my email not being verified. Is that account cooked? Do I need to sign up with another email? Is there a way to get a new verification link?
Hey! This happens to few users, and not sure why exactly. We're working to fix it next week. For the time being, please send an email to [email protected] with the details of what email you signed up with, and I'll be able to verify your account manually.
Gotcha, thanks!
I've been doing Walkscape for about a month and it's really fun!
Thank you ❤️
I'm loving it! I love how the steps for each activity is fair and that we can bank steps up to 8k so they don't go unused!
The bank also grows based on your character level! Mine is now 22k steps, more info here: WalkScape Walkthrough - Saved Steps
Thank you so much! ❤️
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
It's a .gif, and seems like it got resized when si had to upload it. Maybe this would work better?
Been using this since the start of the year i think and it's been really fun! Just the right amount of activity needed, for me atleast! Thanks a lot for the awesome game, and i can't wait for more updates!
Thank you so much!
I signed up, happy to try it out and give feedback. No idea what my average number of steps is because I don't super care about that, but I'd expect it to go way up if I suddenly did care (through a gamified app).
I'm actually dumb and my Garmin tracks my steps, so I DO know exactly how many I take (27,689 weekly). Damn I need to use my treadmill desk more consistently. That's low.
I saw in other comments wearables don't work. That's kind of a bummer. I like to leave my phone charging on my desk and let the watch track.
Doesn't work as of now, but this feature is something we're well aware a lot of people need, and high in our priority. We're just waiting for Google to get their tech together so we can start supporting it.
Have you looked at direct integration with Garmin Connect? My guess is they and probably Fitbit have the huge majority of the market.
Yup, I have! From development standpoint, building integrations with each of the manufacturer is not really an option for us right now, a it's both a lot of work and we can't afford to buy the devices to test it out.
Ah, gotcha. Well, best of luck. I'll let you know what I think when my beta invite comes in. Still waiting.
I'd love to buy the game if it was free software. What license does it use? I can't find one on the site so I'm assuming it's an all-rights-reserved situation.
All rights reserved, the footer on the web page has this.
It's not really viable to run a game studio with developers and artists who work full time to create free games. I wish it was
I'm not asking for people to make their games free as in price, but rather free-as-in-freedom. Osu for instance is an open source game and they're thriving. So it is possible to do so.
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.
Awesome to hear, glad you'r enjoying the game ❤️
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!!
Very cool. Will use this when initial release is available on android!
Open beta release is planned for next year
Awesome. Do you have social media to keep people updated?
We have a newsletter available on the website, and also Reddit, X/Twitter, Discord and WalkScape Portal (which is our own "Reddit alternative" for the game).
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 🙂
Thank you so much for the write up! Glad you like it the concept, and I hope you'll enjoy the game as well ❤️
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!
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
Sounds interesting, I'll apply. I'm a QA engineer and tester, so if i get in i'll start complaining and suggesting :D
Really dig it. Too bad I don't have the time to actually walk around and play this lol, otherwise it looks really fun.
Will this forever (or for the foreseeable future) be Android-only?
It's available even now during Closed Beta for iOS as well!
That’s lovely news, thank you! My partner and I will sign up, this looks adorable. I hope you are insanely successful at launch!
Thank you ❤️ I hope you and you'll partner will enjoy the game and have fun time walking together!
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!
Thank you! And Flutter especially when it comes to game development is still in its infancy, but hopefully more devs would pick it up. It's great for interface-heavy games, and with Flame and upcoming Flutter-GPU also viable for more art-heavy games.
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 ❤️
Gamification of fitness and the like is such a cool concept, I love seeing it in action.
Thank you so much!
Got into the beta before this one, like a week 1/2 ago, and it's so addicting. Can't wait for combat and other stuff but I'm having a blast in just the traveling/jobs/crafting I can do already.
I think you really got something here
Thank you so much, and awesome to hear you've been enjoying it! We're moving to combat and trading after we ship the next update (Quality of Life update)!
Since there is a server with this, will there eventually have a list of other players in locations, and will there be trading/selling items in private shops? A player economy here would be awesome
List of players at a location was supposed to ship already in this update, but we didn't have enough time for it. Trading is planned to be added before the end of the year (our second dev, myzozoz, will start working on it after Party system is completed)
Sweet, is there anyway for me to submit bugs? I walk around 15-20k steps a day but a lot of the times it'll not register my steps, no clue why. This morning alone I've walked a few miles, checking fences, and I get inside to make breakfast and check the game and....no steps registered :( even though the game was on in the background. I'm guessing it's my older phones (note10+).
Especially on some older devices, it's best to shut down the game entirely while walking. There's some issue if it's on the background where steps might get lost if your internet connection changes (for instance, from wi-fi to cellular).
Bugs can be reported either on our Discord (which has a dedicated channel for step recording issues) and on Portal to the bugs category.
Walked another 2 miles and it registered all steps with the game completely closed out. Seems this is the way to go.
Also for whatever reason trying to join the discord doesn't work from the link in the profile. It just brings up discord in mobile but then never registers the server in my list.
The Discord link is sometimes quite buggy, and I don't know why exactly. I think our channel can now be searched for in the communities, maybe give that a shot? Or try this one: https://discord.com/invite/8F5CWpUc
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.
If you're OK with spoilers, check out wiki and map tool. Also our Discord has a plenty of people who are really helpful on giving eaely game tips.
My personal recommendation would be to unlock enough achievements for 20AP to unlock Adventurers' Guild, and then farm enough of their tokens there to get some chests. Their chests have great tools for new players. Then, unlocking GDTE and then Syrenthia.
Smart watch support currently is dependent on Google's process on Health Connect. They're killing Google Fit API, which was our plan for smart watch integration. Health Connect as of now is too buggy to use, but likelt will get better before the end of the year according to Google.
Thank you, and have a fun time walking ❤️
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.
Combat is coming, and so are quests, which will give more direction and goals for new players.
There are a lot of goals already available inside the game, but because it's very open ended at the beginning, it might seen like there aren't anything to grind for. It's one of the games where players usually make their own goals, and then try to achieve those.
First goals usually could be to unlock the other two realms in the game, complete enough achievements to unlock the first guild in the game (Adventurers' Guild), get some good starting tools to become more efficient at it, and so forth.
If you're more combat focused usually in games, I recommend to wait until that's added, as it sounds like that might be the main thing you're missing!
Ah yeah, I'm not a big mobile game fan and heavily play PC games. I just missed the draw of it, but had wrong expectations probably. In my head it was more of a sandbox combat game with gathering/crafting, so I kept trying to get to the actual game part :)
While I'm not motivated at all by just achievements or grinding for grinding sake (incremental games are a slight exception there, but progress is much faster / you do have some goals dangled in front of your face). You're probably aiming more for a classic fitness tracker, but instead of step counts, graphs and so on you present it in game form. Which is valid, but just not what I was after.
As it gets brought up in this thread: When it came out I actually liked Pokemon GO, because the gameplay was interesting. Originally it only showed Pokemon near you and how far they are away (with 1, 2 or 3 foot steps). Which meant you wandered around and actually met people back in the city, grouped up to search or they knew where it was. That all got dumbed down until everyone was just sitting at the same spot and farming unfortunately :-/
Combat in the game is going to require active play, and it's meant to be played at home. It's a turn based combat system with its own progression systems, but you'll need to walk in order to gain combat points, which work as an energy to engage in the combat. So it's not possible to endlessly grind it without going for a walk, but something you'll be able to do when you've got the time for it. There are a few interviews on Youtube where I'm explaining it if you're interested to hear more about it.
Also there's already a ton of depth on the game, so I'm not sure how far you got in there if you think it only represents your steps in a different way than graphs. I recommend to check wiki to get a good idea!
I think I'm too jaded in this regard. Reading the wiki I don't really see depth. Sure, there are activities with fun names, but they are all the same (you start the activity, you walk to finish it, you get random rewards). And all the items seem to be either for selling, basic crafting or just giving you a boost percentage for the activities you're already doing.
What the activities are missing are risk/reward, decision making, surprises, etc. Or as you'd say in game design "meaningful choices".
Sure, you have the choice on what skill you work on, but besides skill go up, items to make the activity faster and gold (not sure what it's for, besides buying mats/items again?) that seems to be it.
I guess combat could help if there's actual resource investment and risk there. Like are you going to tackle this level 10 monster for higher rewards, with more likelihood to either fail (or spend extra resources on healing potions or whatever)? Or play it save and go against weaker monsters? There should also be extra gold sinks to work for / use the money you accumulated, be it limited use items, cosmetics and so on. And of course ways to play the game differently from other players, like classes, masteries, skill trees or whatever (and no, clicking an activity that says "Sandcastle Building" vs clicking "Ship repair" aren't really choices).
Just from someone who values gameplay a lot, I don't see much difference in playing the game for an hour or 100 hours, in the end it keeps boiling down to the same actions with no depth attached. Personally I didn't see the game value of it, compared to a step tracker (just that the step tracker doesn't stop counting when it's "full", I didn't like the step mechanic either where you get bonus steps only. If I've done my walking for the day I want to spend the steps, not select an activity and I get double steps for it next time I walk).
Until there's combat, I don't think there's going to be any significant risk/reward choices. Basically you choose the right gear loadout and head to an activity; you can try to optimize by planning a route, trying to keep your inventory from getting full, etc. There's also low drop rate collectables, so it's a risk to try to find it vs. spending your time on some guaranteed progression.
But at the end of the day, it's a super lightweight step tracking game that gives me some cute in-game progress for when I have to run to the grocery store, or I can make sure I queue up something good before I run a 10k.
Brand new to Wave 3 and loving it so far. Still learning as I go, but gamifying walking is helping.
Ooh, I can't wait to play! This looks awesome!
Thank you, I hope you like it ❤️
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.
I tried to sign up a while ago and had some issues, like link not arriving or something. Shame because I like the idea. Will try again I suppose.
If you have problems with signing up, please send email to [email protected] and I can help you out. Tell me the email you signed up with and I can help!
Hi! Sorry if this has been answered, but this uses the phone's built-in pedometer, right? So, if you're running you'd get more steps/hr (without triggering anti-cheat)? Thanks! Looking forward to trying it!
Yes, indeed! Currently supporting only phone's built-im pedometer, and wearable support is coming when Google fixes Health Connect.
Running is fine, and you indeed get better steps/hr due to the increased cadence.
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 [email protected] 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 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.
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
We're accepting more people throughout the wave, and there's a good chance to get invited still (the wave ends on Oct 6th)!
Thanks for letting me know, the redirect link likely has some old stuff in it, and that page should direct without /home. Will be fixing it!
Can you really only get this through a google group and google play -_- ? Please allow another ways of downloading this, like an APK download.
EDIT: Sadly the game relies on google play services it seems, so I won't be able to play the game probably. Good luck with the development o/
Managing two release pipelines is already a lot, and we currently don't really have the time for supporting yet another one when 99.9% of users are fine with AppStore and Google Play. It's something I'll probably figure out at some point when we have enough time for that though!
And yeah, only relies on Google's Recording API which is part of the services. It's really annoying that they made (just recently) the pedometer APIs part of Google Services, but I can't really change that either.
Yeah I saw that on discord, and it is understandable. I don't know anything much about android dev to add anything else haha
Kudos on the design of the game otherwise, it seems really awesome, I hope you will find a convenient solution at some point.
Is microg an option?
Does it support the new API they are uaing ?
"Service Core (GmsCore) is a library app, providing the functionality required to run apps that use Google Play Services or Google Maps Android API (v2)."
https://microg.org/
The dev said it needs this "com.google.android.gms:play-services-fitness" part of the services to work, I'm trying to find a table of the things MicroG supports but I'm having a hard time x)
E: oh found it
E2: sadly not supported :(
Well, I'm trying! Thanks for allowing me in. I doubt my almost sedentary life is going to level fast!
Is there a lemmy community for the game?
I really wish we had one.
I changed my mind, and created one here: ![email protected]
Hi there Schamppu, I can't find any community related te Walkscape that I can follow...
Could you log out and check if your community is discoverable?
Plenty of people have joined it, so it sure should be discoverable!
No idea what happened, but now I've subscribed too. Thanks for creating walk cape in any case
Sweet! Lemme go...follow? I forget what it's called here.
Lemmify my community? :D
I created one actually, here: ![email protected]
No problem, and glad to have you! No official lemmy community, but you can check our Discord or WalkScape Portal for now ❤️
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 created an official community for the game here on Lemmy ![email protected] 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!
Suggestion: add other exercises. I can’t walk much because the impact is bad for my mangled knee, but biking is fine.
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!!!!
Booo, someone already stole my username :(