(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!
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
This seems super fun! I’d definitely check it out
Thanks! I hope you’ll enjoy it
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
I just signed up! This looks great!
Thank you so much, I hope you’ll enjoy it!
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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.
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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
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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/
Suggestion: add other exercises. I can’t walk much because the impact is bad for my mangled knee, but biking is fine.
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.
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 ❤️
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! ❤️
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).
Ooh, I can’t wait to play! This looks awesome!
Thank you, I hope you like it ❤️
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!
Booo, someone already stole my username :(
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! ❤️
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!
