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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!

https://i.postimg.cc/8z3xhHxZ/barber-GIF.gif

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:

https://i.postimg.cc/Ls28Mm8d/big-gif-square.gif

https://i.postimg.cc/R0LQMC1w/Screenshot-20240821-102724-Walk-Scape-Development.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/HnVQ4Qqt/Screenshot-20240821-102742-Walk-Scape-Development.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/MTZ0XktN/Screenshot-20240821-102756-Walk-Scape-Development.jpg

Edit: small errors and had the same picture listed twice

gramie ,

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.

schamppu OP ,

Thank you! And awesome to hear it, your dogs must be enjoying it as well! ❤️

brbposting ,

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

schamppu OP ,

It’s a .gif, and seems like it got resized when si had to upload it. Maybe this would work better?

jjjalljs ,

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.

Ruben ,

There will probably be an offline/ironman game mode that is a one time purchase

schamppu OP ,

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.

SuzyQ ,

Brand new to Wave 3 and loving it so far. Still learning as I go, but gamifying walking is helping.

flames5123 ,

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!

schamppu OP ,

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.

moon ,

Really dig it. Too bad I don’t have the time to actually walk around and play this lol, otherwise it looks really fun.

mox ,

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!

Minnels ,

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.

MrScottyTay ,

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.

mox ,

If the accelerometer is running, it’s drawing power, but perhaps that can be done efficiently on some devices.

schamppu OP ,

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!

Itsyaboiwhatevs ,

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.

schamppu OP ,

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.

PugJesus ,

Gamification of fitness and the like is such a cool concept, I love seeing it in action.

schamppu OP ,

Thank you so much!

Minnels ,

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.

VelvetStorm ,

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.

chiliedogg ,

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.

MrScottyTay ,

I think it uses the step counter service on your phone. It does not need to be running in the background.

schamppu OP ,

^ 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!

schamppu OP ,

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.

Zoldyck ,

Very cool. Will use this when initial release is available on android!

schamppu OP ,

Open beta release is planned for next year

Zoldyck ,

Awesome. Do you have social media to keep people updated?

schamppu OP ,

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).

Itsyaboiwhatevs ,

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!

schamppu OP ,

Thank you so much!

ngwoo ,

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

magikmw ,

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.

schamppu OP ,

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!

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