Hello Lemmy!
It’s been more than a year since I last posted here. A lot has happened since - most importantly, we just released player-to-player Trading to the game and we’re looking for some new players to join the game!
We (Not a Cult, the company) have gone from just me as a solo dev to now having a team of five people in total and things are ramping up!
I’ve also been posting all development updates to (!walkscape@lemmy.world) for like couple years now if you’re interested to follow us here on Lemmy!
Screenshots
How to start playing
You can start playing the game immediately if you support us through our Patreon page. We currently have 20% and 60% Discounts on Patreon for your first month/year as a way to celebrate the release of Trading. More on the Discounts here.
The game is entirely community funded with no investors or publishers behind it. This way we can ensure that our players are always our #1 priority and the creative vision for this game isn’t compromised.
If you don’t feel like supporting the game or want to try it first for free, you can apply to the Closed Beta. We let new players in who have applied fairly regularly.
Info on how to apply for free access.
Introduction
3 years ago I was wondering of ways how I could motivate myself to walk more. I have ADHD, and sometimes find it hard to motivate myself to exercise. Thought about combining RS as I’ve been addicted to it for more than 10 years and walking, and that’s how the game got started.
WalkScape is a game inspired by RuneScape and other MMOs but with a twist - you progress in it by walking in the real world! It’s designed to be non-intrusive, with no predatory monetization practices. By non-intrusive we mean that it will truly let you enjoy your time outside by not constantly requiring your attention. Everything that needs active involvement (like combat or quests) should be done when you get home.
The main goal of the game is to make people more interested in walking by giving them an amazing gaming experience to motivate them to keep walking. And you can play it while at work, or when you are walking with friends, and while walking your dog. You can truly focus on what you are doing and do more active playing later.
Features & content
- records your steps in the background when the game isn’t even open
- no GPS, no microtransactions, no predatory practises
- smart watch integrations on both iOS and Android
- all of the art assets, writing, content and designs are created by real people. The game has also been translated to multiple different languages by our fans.
- 12 different skills to level up
- a huge world map with 50+ locations
- almost 1000 different items
- 10+ pets
- NPCs, shops, dozens of achievements
- job boards, factions and faction reputations
- leaderboards, Trading, friend system
- and much more!
Gen AI disclosure
Early in the development we used AI generated images as placeholders for some locations. All of those have since been removed and replaced with images created by a real artist.
There is no AI generated content, art or writing in the game and we intend to keep it that way.
Videos
WalkScape Ultimate Beginner Guide video
WalkScape Dev Interview on Trading video
What’s been added since last post
I posted here last time more than a year ago and a ton has happened since. Our team has been busy especially putting together the servers & technical requirements to support real time & asynchronous player interactions. Trading is the first feature coming out that uses this.
In addition we’ve shipped several content updates, QoL, new game mechanics, reworked Bank system, pets, three new skills and a lot more to the game. You can find the full the full version log fron our Wiki.
Thanks for reading
Thank you so much for reading, and I really hope you’d consider joining the game! We have a lot of new stuff coming out and we’re ramping up to get the game fully released as Open Beta.
Thanks again Lemmy for all the support we’ve gained from here. The feedback has also been awesome, and the encouragement we’ve had from your comments have meant a lot to all of us working on the game!
I’ll be answering all comments, feedback and questions here. Stay hydrated and keep walking everyone! <3
I fell off, but it would be great if there was more to do when you aren’t actively walking. (I haven’t played in a year though so there can be more now)
I like the model of walk walk walk to improve and maybe like a bunch of combat or something is not walking. So you are incentivized to walk and move on when you cant beat bad guys anymore etc.
Another cool idea would be dungeons. Maps with multiple decision points that are smaller in scale.
Like walk 500 steps and theres a junction and you decide which way etc.
Really love this concept and cant wait until combat is implemented in whatever form that will be
Combat and Farming are both things that are planned to address having something to do while taking a break from walking but both will be fuelled by your steps! They’ll be the type of thing where you spend your steps but don’t actively walk while doing them.
Dungeons are also something we’ve been throwing around as an idea for the future, but that’s still quite far off.
Thank you so much for the comment!
Been a tester for over a year.
Biggest gripe I have is that we can’t spend our saved steps on instant actions. Its disappointing when you open the app after a long day and find your action stopped for whatever reason and you banked 10k steps. Now because you didn’t “do” anything all day there isn’t anything to “do” in game so its lost its fun for the day.
Would be more fun to be able to spend those steps on instant action or to “instant” travel of you have enough saves steps.
They are my steps and I wanna use them now! Dont make me call JG Wentworth!
I’ve explained in length why this was chosen as the design here if you’re interested (it’s a Reddit post):
DevUpdate #12: Saved steps and active gameplay feedback
There will be systems in the game that allow you to do stuff (especially Combat) with steps actively. We’re not currently considering changing this design due to the reasons that the post outlines there
Been interested in this since early days of your announcement but not joined any tests. Just wanted to say I respect your creative vision for the project but this stance will 100% make it dead to me if you remain immovable on it.
If you truly hate and don’t want to implement dark patterns as you say, having no robust action queue or only this bank implementation is antithetical since players will end up checking the app more often than necessary.
Perhaps your current system is the best one for people that need the extra encouragement to form good walking habits, but it does “punish” players that already have good step habits and prefer not to be on their phone as much as possible.
No hate at all, this is a noble effort to gamify movement and you just can’t please everyone. Just encouraging you to remain open to compromises like the “instant spend premium tax” recommendation.
We added an action queue system to the game long time ago. You can queue traveling and activities afterwards which did pretty much resolve this issue for most people. It doesn’t have crafting available for it yet but it’s going to be added and crafting isn’t as much of an issue like traveling + activities were.
Our DevBlog #64 on Travel + 1 if you’re interested to read on it.
Awesome, thanks
To most of your points for why not it can be solved by making using the steps instantly cost a premium. Say 10% loss for using now vs letting the mechanic as it is now use them. Its really annoying when you are doing a huge step requirement and think you made it only to see you are a few hundred steps away. Would be handy if you could spend some reserve to finish. I usually only have time to check the game a few times a day and its annoying of you finally have the time only to see there is nothing to do.
Edit: meaning I play it less and less the further I progress because it takes so long to do the mid game stuff. I can’t imagine doing the end game activities that probably take weeks. If the goal is ad revenue someday you will be broke with how often the game needs interaction with.
Odd question, but is there a way to ‘boost’ walking multiplier for people with disabilities? I was a closed-beta tester for Ingress way back when, and a pretty heavy player for several years after, until I suffered a stroke that nearly killed me. Now I will play ingress when in the car traveling to doctors appointments, but beyond that, I’m stuck at home just withering away, barely passing 1k steps most days.
Something to think about, I guess?
Offline mode that is coming after Open Beta release will have a multiplier for your steps and it’s aimed as an accessibility feature exactly for cases like yours! In the MMO version it wouldn’t work due to how people would be abusing it.
I remember this! I believe I got invited some 2 years ago when it was in TestFlight. Liked it!
Back then if I remember correctly, it was a little skinny in features which didn’t motivate me to go for walks so I didn’t end up testing much im afraid. Maybe it’s time to try again!
When you say smart watch integrations, does that mean the specific ones? I use apple devices for a phone, but I don’t really want a smart watch. I would however be in the market for a garmin descent, as I need a new dive computer. Would this be a functional replacement? It is a smart watch after all.
Otherwise glad to see you still rocking, your app is a fun one, and a good idea!
Thank you! There’s a ton of new features, content, improvements and whatnot! The full changelogs of all the versions are available here on WalkScape wiki.
Smart watch integrations mean that a bunch of devices work. On Apple at least Garmin and Apple Watches work. But of course your phone works just fine too but if you don’t want to be carrying one with you then smart watches are pretty great!
Thanks for the reply! I guess I can’t hide the fact that I’m not exactly well-versed in smart watches. Appreciate you taking the time, wishing continued good luck on you and your project!
I tried it with GrapheneOS’ sandboxed google play services, and it only sort of worked. Most of my steps wouldn’t get logged. To be fair, that is as advertised. The game seems to expect a consistent reporting of steps rather than just pulling the data when you open it, which seems like the sort of thing that will make compatibility hard.
Anyways what I saw of it was pretty cool so folks should definitely check it out.
Thank you! Support for GrapheneOS is kinda sketchy indeed as the game relies on Google’s Health APIs to pull the steps. I’ve heard that if you have a Samsung smart band/watch/ring and use Samsung Health in the sandbox it might work pretty well. You might even get it to work pulling the steps of your phone that way.
Depending on features, the moment it’s not single player you will have cheaters. If there’s an economy it will be ruined by this. Orna is another such concept and was ruined by a multitude of factors related to cheating.
We’ve had anti-cheat in the game since day one and we’ve been improving it ever since. I think most of our players can vouch for it being very effective. We also built similar solutions for the trading system to spot any abuse of it.
We definitely knew there’s going to be cheaters and I can tell there are and that’s why having a good anti-cheat has been a high priority for us all along.
Wait this looks awesome! I have been looking for something exactly like this.
I haven’t read everything yet, but it sounds great. Apologies if this would be an FAQ, but… would cycling be cheating? I hike and cycle, so if there was a setting for both it would be amazing. I used to play Ingress but didn’t like how it was harvesting players for data.
Cycling isn’t cheating. Our rules state that:
In WalkScape, steps are generated by walking with your legs. We strongly oppose any non-walking methods of generating steps and discourage promoting them in our community (Reddit, Portal, Discord). The only exceptions are situations, where the leg is naturally moving in ways that count as steps (such as cycling) and only as long as the step rate is low enough to not be abusable.
There’s no specific support for cycling, but a lot of people do play the game that way. You do get some steps from cycling if you have your phone in your pocket although it’s not as efficient as walking.
Thanks! Sounds reasonable.
I wear my phone lower on my body when working out on the elliptical. Its closer to picking up a realistic amount of steps.
Oh hey this looks interesting.
We currently have 20% and 60% Discounts on Patreon for your first month/year as a way to celebrate the release of Trading.
*spits,
Ah subscription based bullshit, my behated.
EDIT:
Misunderstood what the discount was for, thought the game itself was subscription based.
My bad.
That’s to support the development through Patreon. If you don’t want to support the game you can also join the Closed Beta for free with the link I listed there.
And if you decide to support you keep access to the game if you cancel the Patreon support. Our Buy Me a Coffee also has a one time support option if you don’t want to deal with any subscriptions.
Ah wait, I think that I misunderstood what the discount was for. I thought that the game was subscription based.
My bad and good luck with the game.
I think I bought the Dev a coffee two years back and have poked at it on and off since for free. You seem to be misunderstanding how this works.
