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
It’s a good game, but one that I fizzled out on. I was playing it every day, excitedly getting my steps in, but when it came time to grind for an item, it fell off my radar.
Last I recall I was doing a crafting activity grinding chests for a shot at winning the candle hat. Given how rare legendary items in chests are, we’re talking potentially millions of steps to grind.
After a few days of grinding, there was less and less motivation to check in daily, which turned into checking in weekly, which turned into checking in never.
The game could seriously benefit from having something else to do while grinding. Minigames to improve your success rate, or rewards for grinding that provide growing step multipliers. Literally anything other than “just do nothing else for the next year+ of your life”. Especially since there’s clearly a limit to how far back in your history it’ll pull steps since last checkin. I opened after a month and only gained like 2 days of steps.
There was a new coin system to make up for bad luck grinding, but that benefit kicks in 2x slower than the expected grind, so it provides a backstop, but when were talking about ~5 million steps on average to unlock a legendary, that means the backstop is ~10 million steps, or 1,000 days averaging 10,000 steps/day
I like the game, but the grind was over the top. RNG grind should not be measured in years.
Thank you so much for the feedback!
We have multiple systems coming out that will provide something else to do in the game actively. Practically mini-games but more than that. Main ones are Combat and Farming.
RNG is a divisive subject, we’ve found that many people love how “hardcore” it is (akin to the inspiration RuneScape), so it’s very much a subjective thing if people love or hate it. Now that Trading is out that works as RNG mitigation: you can just buy the item you need from another player who has it. And the game has plenty of ways to reliably grind money so you can afford to buy whatever you need.
When it comes to grinding some of the rarest items in the game - these aren’t something we really recommend unless you really want to. Most things in the game can be grinded with way less than 100K steps and there are only very few things that require million (or more) steps or anything close to that.
There will be more coming to the game to smoothen some of these things you mentioned and to make the overall experience better for people who want more interaction with the game. But a lot of people also love that they don’t need to interact with it much, so it’s a balance to have there. And this game is designed to be something that respects your time!
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.
God forbid we pay devs for their time and continued development effort. Everything should be free!
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.
Any plans for an iOS app?
It’s already out on iOS through TestFlight! You get the link once you get invited to the Closed Beta. You get it immediately if you support the development or you can join the Closed Beta for free through the link in the post.
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.
Having to send health data to Google to play a game is a hard pass for me. How anyone expects this to be normal and acceptable is beyond me.
Couple things:
- When Google entirely reworked their APIs and added the new Health Recording API (which we use) that’s offline and doesn’t need Google account. Google claims the data on it stays on your phone but you’ll need to trust their word for it. Link to Google’s documentation on this
This API is accountless, meaning it does not require a Google Account to use the service, and data is stored on-device.
- We tried doing our own step counting system early on. But creating your own pedometer is nearly impossible these days and takes enormous amount of time that you’d rather be spending making the game itself. It’s just not possible, especially when you have the platform APIs for pedometer available and those work much more reliably than anything we could do.
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!
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 love this game and used it for a long time! Unfortunately I got a new phone running LineageOS to deGoogle and can’t play it without Google services.
Yep. I was going to give it a shot like a year ago and they went all in on Google garbage. Oh well.
I’d really love to not having to use the Google platform APIs if there were any other ways. We did try but we found out that in order to build your own pedometer that would be anywhere near the same reliability as the platform ones it takes absolutely enormous time commitment and you need a ton of different devices to try it out on. Add in to the mix that a lot of Chinese phones have a ton of battery optimization that you can’t turn off which might kill your background pedometer to the game meaning that you’d need to have the game open for it to record steps.
Also you would need to be constantly supporting all of the different changes happening on new devices and OS versions coming out and what we found out is that instead of being a game developer you become a full time pedometer developer.
When you’re developing a game it’s pretty much not an option spending at least a year (and then continuous support) doing all of that work which you’d much rather spend on making the game itself. Even harder to justify for all of our current players why we would be spending all this time when there’s a working solution that exists already that we could use.
And Recording API documentation claims that it’s offline, doesn’t need Google Account to work and data stays on device. Same deal with Health Connect. You’ll need to take Google’s word for it, but I think they’re bound by GDPR here more than anything which is why they made these changes in the first place and scrapped Google Fit APIs and reworked them to this new platform API.
There are some workarounds at least on GrapheneOS in Sandbox mode where you can get the game working from what I’ve heard!
Yea in the same boat.
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.
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.
That post and the passion behind it just convinced me to dl the game, so thanks
I’ve been playing this for over a year now! I love Thai game and I can’t wait for the full release.
It’s been really cool to see it grow and change.
Hey Schamppu! You’re crafting a wonderful game! I liked your recent interview with Eric that explained all the decisions that went into this process. Also, great to see you on Lemmy! I ditched Reddit and haven’t looked back, haha.
Glad to see you here as well, and thank you so much! <3 I think the interview went pretty great too and Eric had some really nice (and not just easy) questions for us which I hope explained a lot of the design process.
I am a huge walkscape fan! I play every day and love it!
Thank you so much! :D Always glad to hear people are loving it and there’s people here on Lemmy too still playing it! <3
Wait this looks awesome! I have been looking for something exactly like this.
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.
I don’t want to sound like I’m out to break your game, I have no such intention. This makes me immediately think of the tools available to Pokémon go cheating, specifically for hatching eggs which counts steps similar to this game. There is a tool called defit that’s designed to inject believable step histories to your google fit data to fool the game into believing you went on a 30 mile hike in the middle of the night. Pogo never managed to stop that despite cracking down on a lot of other tools. My assumption was always that the spoofed data landed too close to believable and they would have started banning legitimate players if they tried. Another comment here mentions your game requires google play services, so is it working with google fit data the same way as pogo? Is the defit data identifiable for you?
I don’t go to the specifics but I’ve met with people from Niantic and I can say they never really cared that much about cheating. WalkScape uses quite sophisticated anti-cheat and PoGo was always more interested in GPS spoofing anyhow when step data cheating is way easier to detect.
We use specific APIs when you use your steps from smart watches etc. so we can detect exactly where they’re coming from and we have a whitelist & blacklist systems for that in place so any weird apps will immediately get blacklisted and players using such banned permanently from the game.
we used AI generated images as placeholders for some locations. All of those have since been removed
The graphics look like the NFT monkeys in human form, and generated by AI. You should consider fixing that because it’s weird.
One of our newest locations in the game
For the most part the pixel art in this game created by our artist maxchill has been very well received, I’m not sure how this reminds you of NFT monkeys or AI.
He’s talking about the character portrait in the top left of the image of the post. I see what he means. Your character has that same blank look and even seems in the same approximate pose. I haven’t played your game, so I dunno if what he’s talking about applies to the whole game or just that image.
Bored apes really ruined that entire portrait perspective for everyone didn’t they.
Yeah the pixel art profile pictures use the classic portrait perspective and it’s used in many many other games when you want to show off the outfits. You can also change the expression of your character to other options too. I went for this expression just because that felt most like myself :D
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.
I wear my phone lower on my body when working out on the elliptical. Its closer to picking up a realistic amount of steps.
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.
