Recognized by Apple and Google as an up-and-coming next-generation developer, Talofa Games announced that its second title, Monster Walk, is now available in early access in some countries on iOS and Android.
The studio’s debut game, Run Legends, a fitness RPG featured by Apple and Google as a must-play experience, surpassed half a million downloads, solidifying Talofa’s reputation as a rising star in mobile gaming.
Monster Walk is not your typical fitness game. It’s an immersive RPG adventure powered by your steps. Designed for the next generation of players who want to move while feeling like they are playing a video game. Monster Walk transforms your everyday walk into an exciting journey of mysterious lands, creature collecting, emotional bonding, action-packed battles, team and base building. Instead of focusing on competition, it taps into the joy of discovery and connection, making movement meaningful and fun.
Turning steps into adventure
In Monster Walk, the adventure begins with your first step. Whether walking your dog, heading to class, or stretching your legs, your real-world steps seamlessly sync from your phone or wearable device to fuel the game.
As you move, you earn resources, which you use in the game to explore, collect, train, and bond with fantastical creatures while exploring a mysterious world. It’s movement with meaning, where every real-world step brings your in-game story to life.
With this approach, Talofa Games is able to offer a number of interesting features:
Play From Anywhere at Any Time
Monster Walk doesn’t use GPS. It doesn’t track you. You aren’t competing with others. Walk at your own pace. Play the game at your own pace. No pressure, just fun.
Catch, Collect, and Grow
Players will explore enchanting lands, uncover hidden treasures, befriend and build a team of epic monsters, survive action-packed battles, and cultivate a vibrant base, all powered by movement.
Fun with Fitness
Forget intense workouts and competitions, Monster Walk is for the next generation of gamers who value balance over burnout. Midcore gaming meets mindful moments, ideal for those who crave strategy, adventure, and brief play sessions that refresh both body and mind.
A Game That Moves with You
Unlike fitness apps focusing on metrics and habit-hacking, Monster Walk is a game-first experience. It encourages movement through exploration, storytelling, and creature collection, without pressure or competition.
From Indie Prodigy to Industry Trailblazer
Talofa Games founder Jenny Xu is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and a long-distance runner who has launched 10 mobile titles, with over 9.2 million downloads. Xu’s groundbreaking mission is to create gaming experiences that get players to move.
“Monster Walk is a welcoming RPG experience designed for the next generation of gamers, no matter their fitness level. It’s about turning everyday movement into something joyful and rewarding,” said Jenny Xu, CEO of Talofa Games. “It is the next step in our vision of making games for good.”
Registration for Early Access
You can get a chance to be among the first to experience Monster Walk. Register now to participate in the early access in the United Kingdom, Finland, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Australia. It will roll out to the U.S. and other markets later in the year. Join this exciting new fitness gaming adventure and experience a story that grows with you, one step at a time.
Investors include Chameleon, A16Z Games Speedrun, Basis Set Ventures, Insight Partners, 1Up Ventures, and a roster of strategic investors.
Origins
I first met Xu when her team won the grand prize for the Niantic Beyond Reality Contest in 2019. For that contest, Xu and her family created Run to My Heart. Then going by JC Soft, the company created a social running game built on the Niantic Real World Platform, where you had to run in the real world to certain locations in order achieve goals in the game.
That game evolved into Run Legends, which debuted on iOS and Android, which debuted in 2023. Xu raised $6.3 million for Talofa Games in 2024 to advance its mission of creating games for good. The idea is that immersive experiences encouraging physical and mental wellness so that fitness feels like play.
The Monster Walk game is the latest evolution in fitness games for Talofa Games. Much of the development of the previous game happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, people craved social connections.
“With this game, we are realizing the shift to emphasizing more of a game that more people could play. The earlier game was very much tailored towards my love letter for running. And this one actually is for a lot more folks, outside of just that runners group. It’s an ambitious take on a post-COVID world, where people want to get more mindful movement.”
Xu is still a fitness fan. She has run three marathons, including g the Boston Marathon. She runs about 40 miles a week, not counting what she does while walking through meetings on an indoor treadmill.
How it works
This game has a lot more gameplay built into it than Run Legends had. It has deeper role-playing game elements where you can spend a lot of time in the game just playing, in contrast to needing to exercise while playing, Xu said.
The game works by letting you bank your steps during the day.
“Whatever steps you’ve accumulated throughout the day, you then use them to play the game. It’s a GPS-based game like Run Legends, and it’s not an augmented reality game either. You can play most of the game while you’re on the couch. You’re using up those steps as your reward for the day,” Xu said. “And there are elements in the game that you can play while moving.”
For example, it’s also a monster collection game, and you can either fight the monster through a little mini game, or you can choose to walk to catch it as well. So the game can get you off the couch and move.
“Now there’s two ways to play: the couch play, and then the movement mini game,” Xu said. “Whatever you are doing, it accommodates.”
In a game like Pokemon Go, you always have to move toward something outdoors, like a landmark where you can find a gym or plentiful creatures that you want to collect. But there’s no GPS or AR in Monster Walk. So you can play from anywhere. Instead of a world map that has your location, the Monster Walk game has an in-game universe that you can travel through virtually, based on how many physical steps you accumulate in a day.
“The removal of that location constraint is probably the biggest difference with Pokemon Go,” Xu said.
There are elements of a bullet hell game, as well as base building. It has relatable characters and gacha elements.
Making the game
The team worked on the title for less than a year.
“Since Run Legends, we took a step back and thought about what this new generation of players actually wants when they do fitness games,” Xu said. “I spent the past year testing a lot of different things. We looked beyond walking and came back to it as the most welcoming and accessible part of exercise.
The company did a beta test with more than 30,000 people.
“People were playing it every single day for months on end,” Xu said. “We felt like there was something there.”
The company has about nine people now. The teamed aimed the game at Generation Z, which Xu likes to call the next generation of gamers. They’re in the 18 to 28 range. It’s more like midcore game, with hardcore elements but playable in a short time. The social elements of the game are cooperative. People can work together to hit certain goals.
The team tested competitive ideas, but the cooperative play performed so much better, Xu said. There are still leaderboards for steps taken.
“There’s a magical moment we see where people are sitting on the couch playing, and then suddenly they get up and they start moving thousands of steps because they just want to do that next thing in the game,” Xu said.
The game also did much better at retaining players over time. It’s like a lifestyle game, where the game fits into your life to the point where you can play it every day, Xu said. That is the kind of behavior change that can change people’s lives.
“We wanted something that was not about intense athleticism or competitiveness. Run Legends is actually a more competitive title because of the multiplayer aspects. This one targets a different group, which is the more casual people who are just starting up their healthier routines, and people who already are into mobile games,” Xu said. “The fitness side of this is just not as big of a requirement for enjoying this game. It’s actually better that players are earlier in their fitness journey, since this is really a game that, for them, becomes a world to escape into, and it just happens to reward them for moving.”