(EDIT: Some people asked, so I created a community for the game here too with some useful links on the pinned post: !walkscape@lemmy.world)
Hello there, Lemmy! It’s been a while since I last posted here, and a lot has happened since!
First off, we’re once again inviting new players to our third closed beta wave. If you’re interested to give it a try, you can apply to the beta by following these instructions. If you feel like you want to support the development and want to gain access immediately, you can do so here.
I started this project more than two years ago as a hobby while studying Computer Science in the university. I have ADHD and finding motivation to be active is tricky, but gamification works really well for my dopamine craving brain. I first off tried the games on offer from Google Play, but they all either had horrendous monetisation (MTX, ads, or both) or were too distracting. Especially GPS games usually need you to have the game open all the time while you’re trying to enjoy being outside and they also pose privacy concerns.
So that’s when I started to think of what would do the trick for me, and combining my life long RuneScape addiction into fitness seemed like the obvious choice. And I’m happy to say that I’ve definitely been walking nearly three times as much this year compared to last year.
WalkScape in nutshell is a game where everything that happens in the game requires you to walk. So if you want to explore or travel to a location, want to chop some trees, or you want to craft stuff - everything needs steps. You set your character to do what you want, and then go for a walk. The game counts your steps even when it’s closed, and you can open it ip when you’re taking a break or back home to see your progress and maybe switch what you’re doing.
The game doesn’t use GPS, so you can walk on a treadmill. And it can track your steps when you don’t have internet connection, and only when opening the game needs you to be connected.
Here’s what we’ve added in the last three months since I last posted:
- Achievement system with almost 50 achievements. And an achievement rewards track, giving you unique items or cosmetics for your progress.
- Social features. You can add friends in the game and have your personal leaderboards with them.
- A new underwater realm (that has merfolk!) with a bunch of new locations, more than hundred new items, new crafting recipes, activities and more.
- Realm reputation system. You can become famous in any of the four fantasy realms we have now and gain rewards for doing so.
- Job boards & jobs. You can accept jobs that function as miniquests and gain rewards and reputation for completing those. These work as an item sink in preparation for player trading which is what we’re working on next.
- Privacy features. These are all opt-out, so your steps and profile are hidden from others unless you specifically want them to be visible.
- And a lot more!
As always, I’m happy to answer to any questions or feedback you may have about the game. Also from last post, I know many users here might have GrapheneOS, and the game seems to be running on it fine if you run it sandboxed.
Keep walking, and stay hydrated! ❤️
Some pictures:
Edit: small errors and had the same picture listed twice
Edit 2: I created an official community for the game here on Lemmy !walkscape@lemmy.world after many people asked for it. For official development blogs, I still recommend to check WalkScape Portal as I can’t promise we can post them here as well. But we’ll see!
This is a an amazing concept! I created an account (same name as here). And tried to sign up for the beta, however the submit application button is not working for me. I’m using Firefox on android.
Huh, interesting. Could you send me the email you signed up with to contact@walkscape.app and at which point the beta application fails? Is it while you try to submit the fully written application, or even before that?
Emailed! It fails while trying to submit a fully written application.
Replied to you via email!
Booo, someone already stole my username :(
Ooh, I can’t wait to play! This looks awesome!
Thank you, I hope you like it ❤️
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! ❤️
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
It’s not really viable to run a game studio with developers and artists who work full time to create free games.
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 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!
Also there’s already a ton of depth on the game
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.
I love this and I haven’t even used it yet! 😅
A few things:
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I love the idea of paying one-time to play offline, but it’s not currently very possible to do in-app purchases on a ROM like GrapheneOS, which you mentioned in the post as being something users (myself included) have. Will there be a way to pay outside of the in-app purchase dialogue to get access? (i.e. donate through bmac, then link account to app temporarily to confirm) I’d definitely like more of my money to go to you, rather than a play store fee.
Additionally, will there be a direct APK download at all, or will it only be available through the Play Store? (obviously privacy-preserving frontends like the Aurora Store exist, but it’s nice to have an APK download too 😊)
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Thank you for making privacy the default setting, while still letting users share more if they want to. This is something I always love to see!
I’d 100% sign up for the beta right now, but since my GrapheneOS phone doesn’t have the ability to use the Play Store beta features, I’ll hold off on that so I don’t take someone’s spot :)
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.
I’m not an expert on what automation options they might offer, but I know Aurora Store will essentially just pass through anything you do on the Play Store since it’s just a frontend, and for F-Droid you can host a repo where you place any updated APK to automatically make it available to anyone linked to your repo.
I know alternative payment options are probably a nightmare to properly set up and integrate, so it may not be worth the increased cut of revenue you’d get, but I’m really glad you’re considering it!
I look forward to trying the game when it comes out :)
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
I’m not an expert on the process, but anyone making a custom repo should be able to store the F-Droid repo on GitHub.
It looks like you wouldn’t need to make the app open-source either, as it should be capable of just accepting an apk file. (and possibly auto update from any GitHub releases page, not sure on that though)
Again, not an expert, I haven’t made an F-Droid repo yet myself, so I may have understood something wrong, but it looks relatively straightforward according to their guide
This wouldn’t make it available to users through the default preinstalled repo in F-Droid (which is heavily privacy-focused and limited in scale) but it would allow any user to just click a link or scan a QR code to add your repo to their F-Droid app.
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/
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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
deleted by creator
I created an official community for the game here on Lemmy !walkscape@lemmy.world after many people asked for it. For official development blogs, I still recommend to check WalkScape Portal as I can’t promise we can post them here as well. But we’ll see!
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
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 ❤️
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’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! ❤️
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!
