Hello!
First off, I’ve struggled to exercise, and I also have ADHD. Gamifying exercise works really well for my dopamine-craving brain, but I’m also easily distracted, so the current mobile fitness games on the market didn’t really work for me. That’s how I came up with this idea.
Here are some info about the game and how it’s different from Pokemon Go for example:
- no distractions. I love games that value my time. WalkScape is designed so that it encourages you not to open it while you’re walking, but afterwards. And even if you open it while walking, changing things in the game is super quick.
- no GPS. So you can walk where ever you want. The game tracks your steps even without an internet connection, but you need a connection when you open the game.
- no ads, no MTX. I hate predatory monetisation practises, and they encourage unhealthy spending habits. This game is about both mental and physical health.
In the game, you explore and work in different skills such as woodcutting, foraging, fishing and crafting by walking in real life. The game uses your phone’s pedometer to track your progress. It’s also online, so you can work with your friends towards common goals without needing to be physically in the same location.
The game has dozens of locations, hundreds of items, NPCs, shops and more is coming as I work towards the full release of the game. There’s a lot of different unique and cute activities in the game you can set your character to do in addition to the typical woodcutting and mining, like volunteering in soup kitchen or helping locals repairing their boats. All fueled by walking IRL.
If you feel like you’d like to try it out, you can either apply to the closed beta (we’re inviting more people right now) or if you like to support the development, you get instant to access through Patreon or Buy me a Coffee to start playing. The game is completely community funded.
Whether you decide to support or apply to the closed beta, you’ll need to sign up at WalkScape Portal to the game and then apply or connect your Patreon on the account page.
You can also check our this video to hear me and the artist explain more about the game: Youtube introduction video
Or you can visit the website.
We also have my devblogs released every two weeks available at https://portal.walkscape.app/development
It’s been a wild journey for me growing this thing from my personal hobby project, and awesome to see the game helping so many people to exercise more. I’ll answer any questions you might have in the comments!
Stay hydrated, and keep walking ❤️
Hey there, it sounds like a very cool project.
I received my confirmation email but when I click accept the invite, it just takes me to the main page, but I still can’t log in or confirm my account.
I’m using the same username as on lemmy, Varyk
Yeah, I’m aware of this issue and have been trying to find time to look fix it, but it’s relatively rare. It’s something wrong with cookies. Usually fixed after either clearing cookies from the Portal, or trying a different browser. Let me know if it works or not!
Thanks, I just checked.
I’ve used chrome and duckduckgo on my Android, then Firefox and opera on my linux laptop, then chrome, edge and Opera on my windows 10 laptop.
I get taken straight to the main page on my Android and on the windows machine, but on the browsers using my Linux laptop, I receive the error message " application error: a client side exception has occurred. (See the browser console for more information. )."
Is there any other prerequisite I might have looked over before I’m supposed to click on that accept the invite link?
Thanks.
Nope, that should be all. You can contact me with the email you signed up on [email protected] and I’ll sort it out for you
Send, thank you, and of course take your time.
I’m having the same issue here.I was hitting the website link in the email rather than the verify link.
Since this is an MMORPG, how so you prevent cheating? Since this works offline, what prevents someone from faking the steps count and reporting to the game that they totally made 50000 steps while the phone was offline for 24 hours?
Looks amazing! But this was my main worry here.
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Haha, agreed! Replied to the OP with more details, we have this planned out and will do the best we can.
We’re developing an anti-cheat, and have quite good plan how to deal with it. Obviously every MMO always has cheaters, but the great thing about WalkScape is that there’s just one input to the game (your steps) which makes monitoring a lot easier.
We’re already tracking the steps server side and getting some data to implement a version of the anti-cheat during closed beta, and then testing it out in our separate server with people who want to try cheating in order to perfect it before we go open beta. It’s something we’re committed to improve, and I’ll do the best coding wizardry that I can.
My bottom line is that we probably can never catch every cheater, but as long as we can catch those who would ruin the economy or competition, it’s not going to ruin the game for others. And I’ll of course aim higher than that, but trying to stay realistic as this is an indie game and I don’t have the resources to hire 20 people to work on anti-cheat.
Sounds good! Thanks for the answer
Any option without patreon? I deleted my account there a few years back after they tried to push those shitty payment policy changes.
possible with BuyMeACoffee too; https://www.buymeacoffee.com/walkscape
I just tried to sign up there, but seems they only accept stripe as payment - which still insists on making me solve unsolvable captchas before letting me pay.
You must be a robot then and they have caught you red handed trying to pay for things online.
As someone who got into the closed beta a few days ago it is a fantastic motivator to get moving.
Absolutely love the artwork and the parts of the world I’ve seen so far.
Keep up the great work schamppu and team!
Thank you so much Synapsisdos. We will 🫡 Have fun walking!
This sounds really cool. It would be cool if it could work with other services like Google fit or other devices that count steps so that we can go out without phone and it would still count those steps after syncing.
I’d be willing to pay for this feature, although I get that it feels like a post release extra.
Really cool, I’ll sign up probably.
Google Fit and Apple Health support is planned, and the most frequentlt requested feature. We first want to perfect the one we have now so the game is also completely “self sufficient” and doesn’t depend on other apps. But support for those is coming during Closed Beta, including support for smart watches through them.
Will it be able to use my watch to track steps?
Watch support is coming later on when we add integrations with Google Fit and Apple Health, but at the moment not supported. Only phone’s pedometer is now counted for
Ah, my watch isn’t Google anyway, so that’s a shame. Still a cool game, and I’m sure I could play it without watch support.
Google Fit supports almost every watch out there. Garmin, Fitbit, Samsung etc. all should work through it.
Really? I thought it was only watches running Google watch OS, which I didn’t get for battery life reasons. I wonder if my Hauwei GT2 is supported.
Can confirm that almost all watches that work with Android can just link with Google fit
I have original Huawei GT watch, worked great with Google Fit!
When you say “apply to the closed beta”, where do you want people to apply?
- Sign up to the Portal https://portal.walkscape.app
- Click your profile pic to get to account page
- Press apply to beta
I’m mostly using my bike for my daily commutes these days but this looks super interesting. I’ll give it a look !
I’m really interested!!! Unfortunately I keep getting an ‘invalid credentials’ notification after clicking the link to verify. I’ve tried to reset the password but still can’t get in. I’m happy to send a donation, but want to make sure it’s linked to an account.
Do you have a character limit? I also can’t show the password while trying to log in to verify it was inserted correctly. I’ve tried both with and without special characters and am using iOS ‘suggest a password’ feature if that helps at all.
I’ll be trying again in the morning to see if goes through as I can totally understand there being a delay in verification.
Doesn’t have a character limit.
If the problem persist, contact me on [email protected] and I’ll sort it out for you!
Also remember the verify email confusingly has two links in it, you want to click the verify link.
Sorry for the inconvenience, I’ll try to find time to improve Portal at some point ❤️
Hello fellow developer with ADHD! This sounds perfect, exactly what I’ve been searching for. Most apps were not gamified enough, or quickly devolved into some manipulative microtransaction slot machine.
I’ve signed up as monthly supporter and am now eagerly awaiting access to the beta :) Can’t wait to try it.Thank you so much, and hopefully the game helps you out as well! It has tricked my brain so that my average daily steps have gone from around 3k to 10k+ now.
Happy walking and remember to stay hydrated! ❤️
Thank you! Yay, I just got access :)
Sounds really cool! Unfortunately can’t currently help you out financially since I’m crunching to finish my study, but applied on the site anyways. Either way, really cool project and hope to see more of it, good luck!
If you’re interested, apply to the beta through the website! You’ll get access eventually through that ❤️
This looks super neat! Love the theme that you’ve chosen for this game, everything from the UI and graphical choices looks very good imo. Got a few questions im curious about;
- Do you use Google Services Framework for this game to work? I know there are quite a few lemmies who use Graphene OS as their OS on Pixel phones, where some of them might not want to have this installed, (Not that im one of them).
- You write that the game is kind of designed to be opened after the walk, but can be opened while walking. Are there any benefits/features/activities for the user while walking? Such as in Pokemon Go, you stop every now and then to fetch Pokemon. Or does this app kind of encourage not to use it while walking?
- Will the game be open source? Will people be able to download it on F-droid? Or will this be strictly published on Play Store + App Store?
- Will there be any implementations against people who try to spoof their locations to gain “steps” easily? As low as this is, people will always do it to see their name at the top of the leader-board
I very much look forward to seeing this game come to life, I will definitely be keeping a keen eye the next few days! 🌻
Not the OP but
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- It seems like there is not much to do while walking that cannot be done after, so that the app does not enclurage opening it while walking.
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- Did you miss the part where the description states that the app uses the phone’s pedometer and not location?
On 4, this just changes the question to spoofing the pedometer value rather than spoofing the location. Which makes it worse, because that’s much harder to detect.
Well yeah hit that is hpw it seems to he from the description given
Regarding 4. I wasnt quite sure wether he meant that it woudl work with both location and not location on, kind of a use as you want. I have no idea how these things work really so thought it be better to ask. But if that is the case then good. Although another comment here seemed to have stated its easier to spoof…🙁
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Thank you so much for the questions, I’ll answer them as best as I can:
I have intentionally built everything without relying on any Google service. We have couple of players with de-googled phones and the game works great. Worth noting is that when we add smart watch integration through Google Fit, that wouldn’t work. We might later on build support for Garmin Connect too, but it’s still a bit out of scope. But just using your phone to count steps already works with de-googled phones.
Worth noting is though that the closed beta is distributed via Google Play closed testing, but it’s possible to get around that as some other players have.
No, no activities like that you would need to do while walking. If you need to open it during your walk, it’s mostly changing what you’re doing in the game.
All planned active gameplay components are designed so that they’ll be something you play after the walk at your home.
If there’s demand for more “active walking” gameplay, we might implement something for that later on. But for now, we encourage to keep it closed when you walk, and that’s something a lot of players love about it, myself included.
No open sourcing planned. I have released some related stuff open source (like the character creation tool), but not the game or the server tech I’ve built. I have made my own game engine for it, and I feel like if I released it open source I would have to compete against clones of the game I’ve worked so hard to make, so not really keen on doing that.
Just Google Play and App Store for now, I might be releasing it on other app stores later on, but the publishing pipeline for it even now is quite a complex one for a single dev, and I’m not keen to make it even more so.
Yes! I replied to the other comment with the same question in more details if you’re interested reading it.
And thank you so much, hopefully this answered your questions! ❤️
Definitely trying this one out. I’ve been a daily POGO player since launch because it gets me outside walking around. I liked how Pikmin Bloom had the passive pedometer angle, but it also had to constantly check GPS, so it was a battery hog.
I’d definitely benefit from Google Fit integration since I like to use the elliptical while wearing my watch. But I’d still get plenty of distance with just pedometer. Least of which because I’ll already be playing POGO.
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Saw this and tried the game. It is fine but what is not fine is the battery drain. 25-30% per charge is way too high to justify playing this game, sadly.
