Rewarding steps with XP

I don't naturally enjoy walking and I wanted to play around with how Bokuju can use some health feature cross pollination. Steps seemed like a good place to start as Bokuju is meant to be about exploring real nature and snapping creatures you come across.

Originally I was thinking of zoo mode so you can snap quicker and the cards are just eggs that hatch when you walk but I think zoo mode is a feature in itself that I'm still working on.

The battle system

I snap a lot of creatures, always have...which I guess is also how Bokuju came to be. This also means my battle team will be on constant rotation but something irks me about rotating a Bokuju out until I get it to level 30.

This then led to thinking of rewarding users with passive xp (if they want of course as I don't like forcing things onto folks).

Battling still had to be the main contributor of xp with battles vs friends even more rewarding so needed to balance it where you still get that feeling of oh cool my creature levelled up just from walking vs multiple levels and leaving it there.

How it works

If this sounds like something you'd enjoy too, it's pretty straight forward. Add at least one Bokuju to your team and opt in to train while walking.

Your three active Bokuju earn XP passively in the background while you walk. You don't need to have the app open. You just walk, and when you come back to Bokuju, the XP is waiting to be claimed.

The formula is tuned so that walking feels meaningful without making battles irrelevant. Battling is still the fastest way to level up your creatures. But someone who walks 8,000 steps a day will see a real difference in their collection over time, not a paltry trickle that makes it feel pointless.

When a creature levels up, it gains stat points across HP, attack, defence and speed. At certain milestone levels it learns a new move. At every other level you get to pick a new battle card from three options, which is genuinely one of the more satisfying moments in the game.

The claim moment

One detail that matters: you have to open the app and claim the rewards. They don't apply automatically. This is intentional. That moment of opening the app after a walk and seeing how much XP your team earned is a small but satisfying payoff. It closes the loop on the walk. You went out, you did something, here's what you got.

I enjoyed turning that small walk here and there into a mini quest with a reward at the end. Maybe just a novelty thing but I had fun haha.

Touching grass

During testing, I asked a good buddy of mine (thanks Ryan!) to help me see how it feels. Pleasantly surprised that him and his kid were up for going out with a team set, snapping some creatures on the way on a Saturday.

That's cool!

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