Prado Traveler review

I've always like the idea of a mobile game taking advantage of something like your step count or other data to fuel or integrate with gameplay. That said, I am not sure I have ever really found something that really pushes all the right buttons for making this click. Prado Traveler is probably the closest thing to what I'd want to see out of a pedometer-based rpg, and that's good enough for me considering the fact that it is completely free.

Prado Traveler is an rpg where you make a character and send them out on adventures to gain loot and experience. There's not really any story and a lot of the draw is just grinding out more levels and loot to let you go to tougher locales. It's very boilerplate and rote outside of the fact that the whole thing can only progress by walking around.

Each location in Prado Traveler is represented by a deck of cards, which have a random distribution of events in them (usually skill checks and fights), and your goal is to be able to complete these decks without being defeated to earn the most rewards possible. The catch is that each card flip costs a certain amount of steps, which is tied into the step counter of your mobile device.

Smartly (in my view, anyway), the core "gameplay" in Prado Traveler is walking. There is no real interactivity with combat or skill checks, nor do you do a ton of character building as you level up. All of that takes care of itself automatically. That said, between adventures you can visit shops to upgrade your gear, buy components for potions and/or food, and--of course--open and examine the loot from your latest adventure.

If for any reason you are away from the app for awhile, Prado Traveler has a system for banking a certain amount of steps, so you are rarely in a situation where you earn a bunch of steps that can't be used to further your adventures or go on a new one. There are also party mechanics for multiplayer and a PvP mode but I could not get either of those to work and they seem like game modes that are largely impractical anyway.

Speaking of things not working, Prado Traveler definitely has quite a few problems with it. In addition to certain game modes or menus not really loading properly, there have been times where the app hasn't been able to initially load and others where I completed an adventure and the loot I earned failed to appear in my inventory.

These are pretty glaring problems, but I find it hard to get too upset about them considering the game is so low-stakes and free. My bigger problem is that it seems clear that some of the game's visuals are AI-generated, which sucks ass. I don't know what the plan for this game is for further development or sustainability, but if it makes any amount of money, the first thing the developer should do is find an artist and pay them to do some art for it.

Maybe I am being too forgiving of a game that doesn't work all that well, but there's something about Prado Traveler's low bar of entry that makes a lot of its issues not seem like huge sticking points. This is a game I can open up after being out and about all day and get a new sword or something as I track my progress of dungeon-crawling and step-counting, and I don't have to think too hard about any of that, provided the app is working.