Turf - A computer geeks outdoor addiction

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My special interest is a mobile game called Turf. Not Turf Wars that's another game. I've been playing it for six months and it's realy addictive while also getting me outdoors which is a realy big accomplishment as I've been the pretty much complete computer geek for 30 years.

It all started when my back began to hurt in some weird sciatica kind of pain and I realized I had to do something or I would probably end up pretty bad. I started taking walks in pure frustration over the pain and it helped but it was so very boring to just walk around aimlessly.

At that time I remembered a post in an online cardgame community about this game Turf that was supposed to be great if you wanted to get some exercise. I had found it vaguely interesting back then but since it required physical movement I was like "yeah right" and probably continued typing and clicking away on yet another 16 hour by the computer day. Now with my bad back the situation was different and I gave it a shot by using a friends smartphone since I didn't have my own. Surely enough I got hooked right away and soon thereafter my back issues where gone but not my desire to keep playing so a phone of my own was bought.

I've actualy started to enjoy going outdoors and experience new places now. I can long for the next time to leave the house to do my next Turf session. I've made friends through the game and I've lost considerable amounts of weight. All because of a little Android & iOS app.

So how does it work? The game keeps a real world map where red and yellow dots are placed. The goal of the game is to conquer these dots that are actualy zones around the size of 25x25 meters or 80x80 feet when you zoom in on them enough. To capture a zone you just bring yourself to it in the real world by whatever means you prefer and stay in it for 45 seconds while a capture bar counts down. After that it's yours, simple right?

Each zone you've captured accumulates points every hour to your score and in the end of the month a winner of each region, nation and the world is crowned. There are many less prestigious goals to pursue and some of them come in the form of in-game medals. There's medals for taking many zones, for holding many zones at the same time and for visiting enough different zones. Some medals require you to get up at night and others require you to take your phone swimming somehow as you need to capture a zone placed in a lake or the ocean. As you play you gain levels and with that advantages such as keeping your zones blocked from takeovers by others for a longer time.

This game is mainly played in Scandinavia but there are zones placed in UK, Netherlands, South Korea and Iceland as well and I would love to get some international competition. The game is free without any advetising of any sort. I have no economical interest in this nor any position in the development team. I only act because I love the game. If groups of people from other places are interested im sure the creators could be convinced to place zones at your location as well.

How does it sound?

That sounds really neat actually.

Around here people sometimes play really large-scale capture the flag, which is kind of similar.

One area in the US is fairly established I noticed with 509 zones: California.

The site https://web.archive.org/web/20120615000 ... rfgame.com from 2012 June 15. Hmm, that's not so old really...

My father introduced it to me(he drives taxi, so to pass time while waiting he found this game to pass the time) but I wasn't much interested, I was somewhat reluctant as I had some prejudice for the game in that I will get robbed or stalked after playing the game. Though right after capturing the zone I could just turn the gps off...or remember where each zone is and turn it on when I reach it. There are many ways to keep the privacy while playing it I guess...

Anyway I tried it out a bit with a zone close to where I live. After that I'm feeling interested in the game and the exercise is good.

I wonder how long has this game been running or these types of games? Or is it just recently that it has reached mainstream interest? For how long has turf been on Google Play?

I'm not too sure about other games but I imagine they've been around ever since GPS was introduced into smartphones. Turf has been on Swedish Google Play since August 2010. Latest country to get it in their Google Play is UK which happened in June 2013. Even if California have zones it's not available in the US app-stores yet. If someone there wants to try it send a message.

Here's a recent promotion video I made: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy7tnn0H_N8#t=25[/youtube]

Some have felt that especially one of the speakers is hard to hear and I agree it could have been done a lot better by someone with more flare and a better voice (it's me). Therefore I would love it if one or several people would send me a recording in their own voice. A plus if it's a female but a guy is fine and I don't expect a Hollywood performance just something nice. A TV-channel have shown interest in including the video in a production of theirs and I'm always interested in spreading the word of Turf so ofcourse I agreed.

If you want to contribute there's no need to sync your recording with the video I will edit it as needed and also don't worry about normal background noise I use software to remove it. If you don't know how to get the file to me you could upload it to your public dropbox at dropbox.com and send me the link in a pm or we could just arrange something else. Credits will be given in the end of the video ofcourse!

The text: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dck4rcvxkd1fv2m/Turfvideo.txt