Walking RPG · iOS & Android

Grimtread

Your neighborhood is the dungeon.

A grim fantasy RPG that runs on your feet. Walk in the real world and creatures cross your path. Fight them in turn-based duels, tear loot off their corpses, and grow strong one mile at a time.

In development for iOS & Android

keep walking

the world runs on a real clock

The creatures follow the real sun.

A painted creature has two faces — one lit by daylight, one lit by nothing at all. The sun decides which creatures cross your path, and which face the painted ones wear. What it never decides is the reward: nothing out there is rarer, richer or harder once the sun drops. It isn't a menu setting either. It's the sun over your actual street, the same clock that colours the whole game.

DAY · corporeal
NIGHT · incorporeal

The same wretch, midday to dusk. Its look, the palette and the encounter table all turn with the sun.

one loop, endlessly deep

Walk. Fight. Loot. Repeat.

Walk to summon

Real GPS distance accrues as you move, even in your pocket, even in the background. Cover ground and the encounters come to you. No spawns to farm; a walk is the dungeon.

Fight in turns

Turn-based duels with room to think. Three archetypes (Warrior, Rogue, Mage), each with its own resource and a kit of abilities: strikes, bleeds, wards and burns. Elites hit back.

Loot that matters

Affix-based, procedurally generated gear across every slot, from common to legendary. Diablo-grade itemization on a walker. Equip it, reroll its modifiers, chase the god roll.

the systems underneath

Deeper than a step counter.

The loop above is the shape of it. These are the parts that decide whether it is worth doing twice.

Your walk counts while you aren't looking

Distance accrues in the background, even with the phone in your pocket. Encounters resolve themselves as you go, and you read what happened when you're ready.

Bank a fight for later

Something worth fighting turns up mid-walk and you don't have to stop for it. Hold it, keep walking, and take the fight when you're sat down, up to five at once.

The light changes the world, not the odds

The same creature wears two faces, one lit by daylight and one lit by something else, and only the art differs. What changes as the light goes is which creatures cross your path. The loot, the experience and the odds are identical either way.

One character, not a stable of them

There are no alts to grind. You level a single character and reshape them around what actually drops, so a good find changes how you play instead of sitting in a bank.

a grim menagerie

What's out there

Each one wears a different face in each light, the same foe either way. Hover or tap a card to catch it out of its own light.

Molten WretchA charred husk that still remembers walking.
Pale StrayGaunt, lunging, and far too fast for the dead.
Mossback ToadA bloated creekbed thing, crusted in slime.

where this is going

Built in the open, one walk at a time.

One person, evenings and weekends. Here's the honest state of it. No dates, because I'd rather ship it right than ship it when a webpage said I would.

  1. In the build

    The loop works

    Walking summons creatures. Turn-based fights, loot with rolled modifiers, three classes that play differently, and a crafting bench for salvaging and rerolling gear. Fire, frost and arcane damage that armour can't stop, and resistances to hunt for. A bestiary that fills as you go. The world follows the real sun, which decides which creatures cross your path and how the painted ones look when they do. A change of face, never a change of odds.

  2. Next

    Making it worth your walk

    More painted creatures, and depth in combat: enemies with real move sets rather than stat blocks, so a fight varies by what you're fighting. Then choosing where your walk takes you, whether a keep, a bog or a desert, and meeting what belongs there.

  3. Later

    The things that make it a game you keep

    Sound and music. Crafting that targets what you need instead of what you rolled. The drops worth stopping for: uniques and sets, sockets and runewords, gear that changes how you play instead of how big your numbers are. Wider release once it's genuinely fun, and not one day before.

Nothing here is a promise with a date on it. It's what I'm working toward, in roughly this order. The longer version is here

almost here

Soon, every walk is a hunt.

In development for iOS and Android. For now, it's just you, your feet, and whatever crosses your path.