Gamification in the wilderness: techniques to learn from the hiking experience to make the great UX of the game

Hmm, what’s similar between playing games online and doing hikes offline? Let me tell you.

Liudmyla Shevchenko
Bootcamp
Published in
7 min readMar 28, 2023

The view of the hills and lake in Azores
Wonderful Azores, Miradouro da Grota do Inferno

Lately, I've been working in the gaming industry creating UX flows and UI vs. graphics of the idle game. In my free time, I love exploring the wilderness — spending time in nature, and doing hikes. The more I do them, the more I reflect on the background and once I realized there are similarities between two seemingly different activities, hiking vs. playing mobile games.

It’s all about happiness

Green Get reward button

Doing hikes, the physical activity of exploring nature spots following a certain path, we get endorphins which make us feel happy. The same happens once we’re playing a game — if the game is designed the right way we as players get thrilled and excited by playing it. We also get rewarded and that brings dopamine on top. All of this naturally motivates us to continue doing this activity.

In both cases high chances we’ll be happy.

Make a clear road — create a great UX

Now, not all hiking trails are designed the right way. In order to really enjoy this activity you need to have a clear path and navigation leading you. This means that the path initially had to be designed, marked, and tested in real conditions.

Navigation in mountains
Navigation during a hike from Theth to Valbone I made a few years ago in Albania. Challenging but totally worth it.

Creating a path you should also think about various groups of people who will take this road: the experienced hikers, the hikers doing this activity from time to time, and the beginners — all of them are your target audience. They should be able “to read” easily the navigation.

Does it all sound like… UX? Yeap, exactly.

The flow of the first steps in game. Loading — Intro — Open menu
One of the quick solutions to start working on the UX of the game is by drawing user flows, schemes and UX flows. The very first iterations could be done manually.

Learn, design, test — an easy-to-understand UX is the core of the great game. Easy-to-learn gameplay, intuitive transitions, and clear goal are some of the very first elements that should appear (while being invisible to a player) once the game is opened for the first time. This is a base to hook a player and keep him playing.

The game should also be as easy to understand as possible so that even someone opening the game for the very first time in their life could get the idea and how-to-play experience.

Clear goal

The sketch of the battle pass
Battle Pass — a classical element of the game where a player sees clear goals and feels the challenge to complete them in order to get the different rewards. There are usually two types of rewards, the premium ones (the paid feature) are much more attractive.

As a player, you need to understand what’s your high goal in a game as well as the goal of each level. The blurred goal or no goal at all will easily lead to losing interest in a game aka failure.

Many hikes do have a clear goal — a final point to reach, a scenic view, a waterfall, or any other natural wonder. This is a hiker’s motivation (unless you’re doing hikes purely as physical exercise).

The skyline of mountains
Trekking in Nepal, 2021. Watching the sunrise from the top of Poon Hill and the gorgeous skyline of peaks was the highlight and the goal of the trek.

The feeling of progression

While doing the hike you find info on how many more km have left, and how many more hours to go. These are the indicators of your progression, they give you the signs you do move toward your goal, keep it up!

Gauge with chest
An example of a gauge in the game

It can be compared to a gauge in a game, a UI element to indicate how your progression is changing. Depending on its role it may have an image of the reward you get once reaching the next level.

Gauge or progression in any other form is another key part of the game to stimulate players to continue spending time in the game. We as humans like to accomplish certain tasks since this is how we feel we control the situation.

Reach the challenge

Your general progression leads you to choose more complicated roads further. You start with easy hikes but in order to keep the dopamine high you need to take more challenging options next.

The same happens in the game. Each time we challenge the player to reach a slightly more complicated task cause if we’ll provide the same type of tasks all the time, a player will get bored in the end and might simply uninstall the game later.

The cost of upgrading or buying a certain element also grows so that a player is engaged more and spends more time playing.

Create the right atmosphere

Birds and owl
Some of the beautiful creatures I’ve met in the rainforests of Costa Rica

Once doing a hike you’re in nature listening to birds singing, leaves rustling, wind blowing. Just imagine it for a while. All of these create a unique atmosphere and a connection with nature.

The same comes with the games — they have to have music in the background. Even if not all players are playing with the sound turned on, this is a crucial part each game should have nowadays. Music is a secondary element that adds to your feeling and perception of the game and its’ story.

Add different themes

Tropical rainforests, mountains covered with snow, foggy lakes, and green hills – so many different surroundings to explore while hiking each bringing something new to your senses.

When it comes to the games different themes are another common approach to make the gameplay feel slightly different and new. And while usually the mechanics of the gameplay hardly have any significant changes, the pure visual difference already brings a new perception for a player to engage him more.

Think about a community

Build your community — not only attract new players through awesome ads (Gosh, have you seen what Merge Mansion game is doing on that?) but actually, continue working on a constant engagement. It requires a lot of effort and time to create strategies and maintain them but they can play a significant role in the life of the game.

The same comes for hiking. As a hiker, you feel a sense of community through various online publications, hashtags and while actually doing hikes. Once I landed in Nepal back in 2021 my first impression was — wow! I’m in a hikers’ place. Little did I know in a week I’ll get stranded there and hardly meet any other hikers during my trek. But that’s already a totally different story.

Supposed to feel a strong sense of hikers' community in Nepal while trekking in the popular Annapurna region but since it was still during Covid times, there were very few people on my way

Conclusion

The crucial element to make your game reach success are:

  • think about the positive effect the player should get once playing your game;
  • create an easy-to-understand UX. Test your flows to constantly check whether they are clear and simple enough;
  • bring clear goals into the game — both small and end goals;
  • keep a track of progress through the gameplay;
  • challenge the player each time with a slightly more complicated task;
  • don’t forget to add music to bring the atmosphere;
  • add various visual themes;
  • work on developing the community;
  • and finally, go on a hike.
Nature surroundings
Beautiful levada in Madeira

Hiking will refresh and inspire you with new brilliant ideas. So, did you already choose your trail?

Since I mentioned my trip to Nepal, here’s the UX flow analysis I wrote back in time:

I love finding inspiration in the most unusual ways and here’s another guide, don’t forget to prepare your cup of coffee to read it:

Talking about UI design my aspiration is to create bright and unique designs and here you can read more on that:

If you want to see my designs and stay connected, follow me on Linkedin, Dribbble, Twitter

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Bootcamp
Bootcamp

Published in Bootcamp

From idea to product, one lesson at a time. Bootcamp is a collection of resources and opinion pieces about UX, UI, and Product. To submit your story: https://tinyurl.com/bootspub1

Liudmyla Shevchenko
Liudmyla Shevchenko

Written by Liudmyla Shevchenko

Product designer, ex globetrotter based in Paris. Writing about my experience in work, life, and travel

Responses (3)

What are your thoughts?

Love your analogy , and how you’ve found a way to merge two passions 👏👏👏

Nice comparisons! Your article is as good as hiking (and gaming ) ☺️

I can't help but feel like there is something slightly evil about games that utilize progression systems that force you to log in every day. Battle passes have become a way for companies to sink their teeth into players, taking up as much of their…