(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!
Can you really only get this through a google group and google play -_- ? Please allow another ways of downloading this, like an APK download.
EDIT: Sadly the game relies on google play services it seems, so I won’t be able to play the game probably. Good luck with the development o/
“Service Core (GmsCore) is a library app, providing the functionality required to run apps that use Google Play Services or Google Maps Android API (v2).”
Managing two release pipelines is already a lot, and we currently don’t really have the time for supporting yet another one when 99.9% of users are fine with AppStore and Google Play. It’s something I’ll probably figure out at some point when we have enough time for that though!
And yeah, only relies on Google’s Recording API which is part of the services. It’s really annoying that they made (just recently) the pedometer APIs part of Google Services, but I can’t really change that either.
I’ve been using it for the last few weeks, applied at the last post and just got in. Right now there is basically nothing to do in the app. I’ve heard there are plans for combat that you can do in the app. But I’d love the option to plan your next things. Like a to-do list. There are jobs and I’d like to go and cut 214 Birch trees. Not more, not less. Currently I’m sitting at 17 stacks of birch logs (each 25) since I was walking for a long time without time for the app. I didn’t need as many and it seems like my steps were wasted. I’m still super low level but there are items that are worth 0 copper, others are worth 1 copper and processing 2 of them (costing steps) results in an item worth 2 copper (wasted steps). However to get to another area I need 4.5k so that seems somehow punishing. Regardless of those nitpicks it is really nice, got me moving way more than I would have (started walking while on calls during work) it’s definitely an incentive but I’d really like to plan my steps ahead. “Go here, gather x amount of an item, process said item or collect another…” You probably understand where I’m going otherwise shoot me a PM I love the game, recommend signing up and once I’ve seen a little more than walking cutting trees and then planks I would consider a one time purchase. (Or maybe a stylish shirt or cool tattoo only available through mtx. Once p2w is in I’m out
There will be no MTX or P2W!
And there are quite a lot of things to do in the game already. I recommend to explore the starting area, and there’s nothing stopping you from planning things you want to do. If you’re feeling a little bit lost (which I totally get, the game is still lacking a proper tutorial and starting quests) I recommend to check the wiki. There are guides there also how to make money. The NPCs don’t pay pretty much anything for early game unprocessed materials, but there are several ways of gaining coins. You can also get past the Fort of Permafrost by going under water and skipping paying for the toll entirely, for which you’ll need to find Diving Gear.
Thanks for the feedback! ❤️
Have you thought about putting in a scheduling system? Like being able to queue up a bunch of stuff to do? Then the game telling you the # of steps required and then you can go on about your day?
Yes! A limited queue system and notifications are both planned to be added in the next update.
Really dig it. Too bad I don’t have the time to actually walk around and play this lol, otherwise it looks really fun.
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
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
