I'm the developer of WalkScape, the RuneScape inspired MMO where you progress by walking IRL. We released trading last week and we're looking for new players!

Submitted ⁨⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨walkscape@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

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

Screenshot 1: Activity view

Screenshot 2: Gear view

Screenshot 3: Location view

Screenshot 4: World Map

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 introduction video

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

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Comments

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ignirtoq@feddit.online ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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 anything 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.
  
  Add in to the mix that you 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.
  
  There are some workarounds at least on GrapheneOS in Sandbox mode where you can get the game working from what I’ve heard!
  
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- lazylemons@lemmy.today ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yea in the same boat.
  
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- despoticruin@anarchist.nexus ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yep. I was going to give it a shot like a year ago and they went all in on Google garbage. Oh well.
  
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Donebrach@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Didn’t read your wall of text but I immediatly thought “why normal ass boots give me merfolk walking?” Maybe the joke was in the flavor text or whatever but come on. Maybe art be a boot on a fishing line? Or like, flippers?

Again first thought not looking at anything else but like… come on.

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The shoes are the symbol of Agility skill which that activity is categorized as :D but it’s a fun idea to switch them to something else while you’re in an underwater world.
  
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danciestlobster@lemmy.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I thoroughly enjoyed it, the only thing I needed was synchronizing with watch for when I exercise without my phone

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yes, indeed smart watches work! We have the list of supported smart watches here: wiki.walkscape.app/wiki/System_Requirements
  
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SincerityIsCool@lemmy.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - gressen@lemmy.zip ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
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dom@lemmy.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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!
  
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Maven@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I am a huge walkscape fan! I play every day and love it!

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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
  
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5PACEBAR@piefed.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
That looks neat! I just subscribed on Patreon. Thanks for sharing on the threadiverse! ✨

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Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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!
  
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  - Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I appreciate your response and I know I am but one of many opinions out there and you have your own priorities in how the game is designed and paced!
    
    I certainly enjoyed it and I love the art, just sharing one anecdote on how it can get burned out.
    
    Me personally, I don’t mind RNG as a concept, and I like your approach of having the coins as a backstop for really bad luck, I just think there should 1) be something to do while grinding, and 2) be a sincere assessment (and hopefully rebalance) of how long is practical to grind for top-tier items. Years of grinding on average per item feels like… A bit much.
    
    Another popular way to balance the RNG is to have RNG stats for the items, that way you can have legendary items be more common, but perfect legendary items still take time. IIRC I was going for the candle hat partially for its stats and partially because there was a perk or location unlock for having multiple light sources equipped. I could satisfy the latter with a lesser-tier hat.
    
    Looking forward to seeing how things develop, maybe I’ll pick it up again soon, especially now that the weather is cooler again and I can use my walking desk while I work without getting cooked.
    
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one_old_coder@piefed.social ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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.

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Image 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.
  
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  - KRAW@linux.community ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    He’s talkinf 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.
    
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wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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?

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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eldyaitch@lemmy.zip ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - eldyaitch@lemmy.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Haha, yeah when I saw the raw footage I was like, “Man, you really didn’t pull any punches! 😅” He’s so passionate about the game but he also has no filter, lol.
    
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mr_jay@lemmy.zip ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Any plans for an iOS app?

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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bognus@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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!

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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!
  
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  - bognus@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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!
    
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W3dd1e@lemmy.zip ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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Lemming6969@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - LostListener@piefed.social ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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?
    
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stopforgettingit@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Wait this looks awesome! I have been looking for something exactly like this.

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Arghblarg@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- walkscape@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Arghblarg@lemmy.ca ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Thanks! Sounds reasonable.
    
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