Inspiration
I used to run a lot but this year I felt like most of my free time has been pre-occupied by hobby game dev that I have sacrificed my fitness time.
So selfishly, I decided to make a game that would hopefully make me do both. The goal was to make a game that is fun on its own so that you are forced to go for a run in order to play it.
What it does
It's a traditional roguelike combined with a fitness app. Your turns are powered by your physical run in the real world.
How we built it
It's a standard iOS app built using Spritekit and a gazillion AI tokens. Art assets are 100% human sourced.
There is a backend component to this, I wanted to make sure everyone gets the same dungeon every week so the dungeons are generated in the cloud. My stretch goal idea was to make it possible to leave messages in the dungeon like Dark Souls, but I didn't have time to implement it.
Challenges we ran into
I put a lot of constraints into this project to make sure this doesn't contradict my values. So no pay-to-win, no streak gamification, and no invasive tracking. I don't know how I will improve retention but the game itself has a lot of possibilities for engagement.
Getting feedback was difficult because the venn diagram of fitness and roguelikes is very small.
App review also took longer that it needed to be because of the healthkit permissions. It got rejected because the app reviewer didn't see any need for the health kit permission.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
That I kept true to my goal and values. The momentum mechanic for a roguelike I feel was unique and kept it from being just another Shattered Pixel Dungeon clone.
Was able to finish a full roguelike game end to end within 2 weeks of development time.
What we learned
The whole app store process would have probably been easier if I just did a traditional roguelike game without the fitness stuff. Maybe that's what I'll make next.
What's next for Run More One
I want to keep extending this. I already have quest ideas and more dungeon biomes.
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