Introduction
This is the premise of the senior capstone project. The “walking challenge RPG” is a concept for a game that was originally thought up by me and my brother, Arjay Hamilton. It was conceived as a way to implement exercise as a major game mechanic. This game fulfills a niche that other games do not. If you look in the App Store, and search for “exercise games” or any variant thereof, you won’t get any interesting results. The results are mostly apps that keep a schedule for you and your completed exercise, rather than a game. The other part are games that have you make a game character exercise instead. Why isn’t there a game that you can play that is fueled by your exercise? This is what the game aims to do; motivate the user to exercise and progress through the game.
What Is It About?
The player is a small cat that needs to save the Cat Kingdom. The kingdom was taken over by the Cat Sorcerer, who brainwashed all the animals of the kingdom. The player, the new Cat Hero, as he was the only one that wasn’t brainwashed, must acquire equipment to become stronger and defeat enemies. The way to do this is by walking in the real world, which earns the player gold. Gold can also be obtained from structures that can be bought with said gold. Defeating enemies levels up the player, which allows them to buy stronger equipment and structures. To help out, the player can fulfill “walking challenges” that provide more money or items. Combat is simple, with stats from equipment deciding everything. Experience is gained by defeating enemies, and leveling up allows the player to buy stronger equipment and structures. If we have time, we can make the combat more complicated, but we want to keep it simple for now. It depends on how proficient we get with the language.
Why?
As mentioned before, this game fulfills a niche that no other game does. In my research, I found that people tend to me more motivated exercising when it is “gamified”. As written in “Turning Exercise Into a Game Can Make Fitness More Fun and Effective” by Brian Mastroianni”=, people performed more physical activity when it was turned into a game. They cite a study, “Gamifying Accelerometer Use Increases Physical Activity Levels of Sedentary Office Workers” that supports this. Additionally, a simple Google search can bring up results of many people having success gamifying their efforts. This project will create a game that will follow this idea; a game powered by exercise. Rather than exercising and competing against others, exercise allows you to progress in the game, which provides motivation. Motivation is much easier to come by when you are doing something you enjoy, and exercise is not always something people enjoy. Playing a game though, may be something you enjoy. This way, the game provides the motivation to keep exercising.
Thank you for reading.
