The Snail: Walk for your life

Step-powered survival game and cozy creature collector.

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The text below was written the old-fashioned way (by a human)

The app and marketing materials use 100% hand drawn art

Inspiration

Walking is one of the healthiest things you can do. It's relatively easy and accessible to most people, yet people often find it difficult to find the motivation they need to get their daily steps in, including us. We work at a desk looking at screens all day and need to go touch grass and get our bodies moving for our physical and mental health (especially during our rainy Seattle winters) without having to look at yet another screen. When we're out for a walk, we want to be able to unwind, enjoy the outdoors, and connect with each other. That's why we created The Snail.

The Snail: Walk for your life is an original game that encourages you to build a healthy walking habit. In this game, you adopt an adorable little creature called a Bobo, BUT there is a cursed snail coming after it. You need to consistently meet your daily step goal in order to keep the snail away from your Bobo. If you don't get moving, the snail will slowly catch up, and your Bobo will be toast.

We know that a gamified walking app is not a revolutionary concept, but we're confident that The Snail strikes the perfect balance between being useful and fun with a broad appeal towards both health-conscious people and those who maybe just need a little more motivation.

What it does

We haven't decided yet if The Snail is a gamified health app or a healthified game app. Maybe it depends on the phase of the moon or just the vibe that day.

Regardless, there is a cursed snail on a map of the world that is constantly chasing your real-life location (using GPS). If it reaches you, your sweet innocent baby “Bobo” perishes forever.

Your daily step count determines if the snail makes progress towards your location or not. If you hit your step goal for the day, the snail does not move an inch. But if you don't hit the goal, you better start looking behind you.

Features

  • Bobos to adopt, name, care for, customize, and discover
  • Multiple progression tracks that unlock unique rewards
  • Hidden stories and secret unlocks
  • Distinct themes with light and dark modes
  • More coming soon!

How we built it

The app was built with React Native, Expo, and RevenueCat. It's out now on iOS and Android is coming soon. We use a hybrid freemium model where the base game is completely free, fun, and playable, but the premium subscription enhances the experience with a few perks:

  • The daily step goal is customizable (default 5k)
  • Beautiful hand drawn app themes
  • Extra rewards from the progression tracks

We ALMOST made the mistake of locking some Bobos behind premium (there are 3 starters) but decided to instead make them unlockable for everyone. They're called "mystery" bobos and figuring out how to unlock 'em all is part of the fun.

Challenges we ran into

The Snail is based on an internet meme you may already be familiar with. You're gifted a million dollars, but there is a snail slowly moving toward you at all times and if it touches you, you die. Our original design stayed true to this concept. We only had a "Live Escape" game mode where the snail followed your real-life location and if it reached you, game over. There was a huge issue with this game mode. Not everyone can just... evade an imaginary snail full time by traveling around the world (but maybe we can get an influencer or two to try). We also realized that the incentive was lacking. Why would a player care if no real money is involved and if they die in a game they can just start over? I certainly wouldn't care, but you know what I would care about? Protecting a little guy.

We needed to put a twist on the meme to make it work as a compelling game. We designed a way for players to "run away" from the snail without actually leaving their neighborhood. We use the player's step count to push the snail back instead of forcing them to move forward. This ended up being the current game mode. It keeps the spirit of the original challenge without being completely impossible.

To make players care about losing, we shifted the stakes off of them and onto a cute little guy. When you begin the game, you learn that a cursed snail was coming for you, but a tiny, adorable creature called a Bobo got in the way and saved you without fully comprehending the consequences. Now it's your turn to protect them. We think protecting a little guy from the snail gives you more motivation to hit your steps than saving yourself does. Over time you'll build a bond with your Bobo and the desire to keep it safe will grow stronger.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

We are proud to declare that the app uses 100% hand drawn art. We’re super lucky to have an amazing artist on our team who tirelessly drew everything and we think it’s beautiful. I hope you agree!

Beyond that, we are super proud of how cohesive the app is. The design, game mechanics, lore, and features all complement each other. We didn’t try to force features that didn’t make sense or force a gajillion premium nudges every time you open the app.

The lore in particular was really fun to develop and I think the way we implemented it promotes community building and user retention. The lore is slowly unveiled to the user through playing the game and we reveal different fragments to different users so if somebody wants the full picture they’ll have to go to our subreddit /r/the_snail to piece everything together. Likewise, the unlock conditions for the mystery bobos are pretty vague, so we're hoping users will work together to solve every unlock.

What we learned

  • Hand drawing all the assets for an app takes a long time and can result in wrist pain and eye strain (OUCH!)
  • Marketing can be just as fun as development (so long as you don’t take yourself too seriously)
  • Feedback is EVERYTHING, get it ASAP
  • I would die for my Bobo (Cleon) <3

What’s next for The Snail

More features (ask me about Waddlethons) and more Bobos. The end goal is to create a snail and Bobo cinematic/game universe (The Boboverse). After enough growth we will trade our IP for a K-drama studio in Seoul and a guinea pig sanctuary in Australia (JK).

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