It’s not usual that a Kickstarter has to reassure potential backers that they don’t need real-life combat skills.
Nevertheless, Quell does. It’s a boxing game that uses motion tracking, a resistance rig and a computer RPG to keep you entertained while your boxing and fitness levels improve. Sound implausible? The Kickstarter community disagrees, and the set up has over 500 backers, slaughtering its funding target on just day one.
To play Quell you wear a harness that does two things; it restricts your movements forcing you to pull against it to throw punches, and it uses motion tracking so that you have to throw punches to defeat computer game monsters.
Some of those monsters, in the interests of creating a replayable game, are procedurally generated.
A pet peeve of mine is missing out on activity rewards for activity completed. Quell has thought about this and integrates with popular fitness trackers, including Google so that your character can benefit if you decide to go out for an Ingress march rather than stay inside and explore the computer game.
Crucially, you don’t need a fancy camera set up to track your motions. The resistance rig and associated gauntlet do the work and stream over BlueTooth to your PC, Mac or Phone. Quell say the latency is very low and that you can even then stream that gameplay to your big TV.
If you’re quick, you can secure an early bird slot for £169 and get the full system and 6 months access to the Quell+ platform. After that, it’s £189 for the same except only 3 months of access.
The base game is free for life but Quell+ is the subscription model to bring new workouts, quests and enemies into your workout gaming.
Tempted? I am. You can discover more about Quell from their Kickstarter page.
Take part in the conversations on the site and leave a comment below.
