Disclaimer I am not a developer. I just love this game. No referral links anywhere here. No pay-to win. I believe the only way you can spend money is by donating to the developers.
I have always been into GPS mobile games. The first one to really hook me and get me outside was Resources Game years ago until a friend and I had moved out of the area. Played that for about a year and loved it. Since then I have always been on the lookout for something else and I can say I probably have tried everything out there aside from the Pokemon Go knockoffs. Ingress was fun for a while although it melted my phone and felt a bit pointless. Orna feels like a mundane simple RPG with gps elements that absolutely hated although I forced myself to something like level 75 because the game play was supposed to “open up” but didn’t.
In 2019 I found Badge(r)s. This one is truly a diamond in the rough and if you like GPS games, you owe it to yourself to give it a try at least.
Premise: Slowly overtime you generate badges with your name on them. At level 1, you will only generate level 1 badges. As you level up, you start to generate higher level badges in a cycle from 1 to your current level. You can then at any time drop your badges at your physical location. The game is played on a google maps-like map with the whole world divided up with little squares. You gain experience by dropping one of your badges that you’ve never dropped before. You gain more experience points if you have not dropped anything within that square before. Additionally, you gain experience by pickup up a badge inside a square that you have never picked up from. The squares change color based on if you have interacted with them or not before. Seems simple enough, slowly generate badges, drop them in new places.
You have a limited number of badges you can hold so if you don’t drop anything for a few days, you could end up with a full bag and will not generate them anymore.
How do you increase your bag size?
For every unique badge you find in the world, your inventory size increases by 2. That means if you find another player’s level 1 badge in the world and pick it up, your inventory size increases by 2. If you pickup a second level 1 badge of that same player, your bag does NOT increase.
That is strange, What is the point of all this?
Each square in the world is connected to a city, county, state, and country. I live in the state of Illinois, US. There are leader boards for each city, county, state etc. Currently there are 2 leader boards for each area. Rulers and Mappers.
Rulers: The highest sum of badge levels in an area by a player.
Mappers: The player with the most square interactions.
Right now I am the top Mapper and Ruler of Illinois as well as a number of counties within. Becoming the top of these leader boards grants you a badge for that as well! The game gives you the unique county or state badge into your bag thus increasing your inventory by another 2. Now imagine a town with multiple players all dropping badges which anyone can pick up. You only gain from holding 1 of each level but you can pick up the higher level ones of another player to reduce their Ruler score. You can hold it forever if you have the space or drop it outside of town where you outnumber your fellow player. This is where the game mechanics shine.
There’s a website that you can check all kinds of stats. Who is the current ruler of Spain? I dunno but I could find out. You can look up how far your badges have traveled as well but the devs have made it to not show precise locations where other players have been for privacy. This game is based in Europe but I am writing this to hopefully get even more players to join. It is so casual, I’ve played it off and on for 3 years and still find myself coming back to check when this one start blowing up.
Game Website:
Play store link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.spieleck.app.badgers&hl=en_US&gl=US
The UI can be a bit tricky to navigate at first but there’s an actual tutorial now since I have started so I am eager to see what others think about it. Comment below and I will answer any questions you’ve got. There’s an in game chat function as well and the players are always helpful for newbies.