App Review: Battlesuit Runner Fitness

BattleSuit Runner Fitness is a running adventure game following an alien invasion story where you are the wearer of a battle suit, combatting aliens and running missions

The app gamifies running by integrating exercise into the story including gaining materials known as 'Iridium' to upgrade the suit and battling aliens based on your suit's specs. Upgrading your suit between runs can change the story and the outcome of the battles which is a neat idea and motivates you to run more missions to upgrade the suits elements such as the laser, armour and precision. You can even upgrade to a proximity mine if you get enough iridium

There is a story running element with audio clips played at intervals. A range of characters join you on your battles, either accompanying you in their own battle suits, or over the communication channel. You can play your own music in-between story elements

The app includes an interval training element, known as 'supercharging' where your speed increase can affect your success or failure. The intensity of this can be altered with the lowest being a 10% increase, so don't worry if you're not feeling up to intervals. I eventually upped it to 100% and it was quite intense! There is also a nice choose-your-own adventure feel about the stories where you can choose what your character does based on your speed

BattleSuit Runner Fitness comes as a free trial version and a paid version with more missions. I enjoyed the trial so much that I purchased the full version which has 9 missions. Would be good to see more. I really liked the interval training aspects and the ability to change the story was a really nice feature

Advantages

• The story element is quite compelling and offers a good distraction whilst running
• Good motivation to go out on more missions to collect iridium and upgrade your suit
• The acting and sound effects are pretty good
• The storyline really does change based on your choices and ability
• The interval element works well and can be changed based on how fit you're feeling
• You can listen to your own music

Disadvantages

• There are only 9 missions. More have been promised for some time but it is unclear if any more missions will ever be added
• There is no fitness tracking. You will need to run another app at the same time that provides this feature
• At the time of writing, hasn't been updated since 2014
• No ability to synchronise progress

All-in-all I recommend this app for those that like the story running element mixed with motivation to complete missions. The app does a great job of gamifying running. I just wish there were more missions as those aliens aren't going to give up .....


Free Version



Full Version

New Blog!

I've decided to create a blog for my road to fitness and record my thoughts on various ideas, apps and techniques I try along the way. Mostly because I have a terrible memory but hopefully it will help someone else along the way!

I was reasonably fit in my late teens/early twenties but life and an office job meant I put on a load of weight and basically became totally sedentary. It wasn't until my late thirties that I decided to do something about it. Exercise was, initially, an aside to losing weight. I wanted to be less-fat but I enjoyed eating, so exercise was a way to burn some calories that I could then eat!

3 years later, through a combination of calorie-counting and exercise, I achieved my goal of losing 38kg (about 6 stone, or 84 pounds) and started working on fitness instead. Along the way I discovered motivation in achieving goals and that exercise had significant benefits for my mental health. This year I have set myself the goal of running 1000km in a year which, given my total lack of exercise 4 years ago, is a huge goal for me

My daily motivation mostly came from gamifying fitness using fitness apps on my phone. I plan to post reviews and try out new apps to keep me motivated and hopefully provide some useful information along the way. If this inspires just one person then that is a goal worth achieving :)