Building Outdare: a quest RPG that only works if you go outside

Scripcariu Andrei — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 07:50:06 +0000

I'm building Outdare, a mobile quest RPG with one hard rule: nothing in the game can be done from a couch. Quests are things you do in the physical world. Walk a route. Photograph something specific. Solve a riddle tied to a place. An AI referee checks the photos, including catching players who photograph their monitor instead of going outside (that arms race deserves its own post).

The stack, for the curious: Flutter app, Java backend, Firebase auth, and a growing pile of server-side verification, because players are wonderfully creative cheaters.

What's in the open beta today:

Photo, step, trek, riddle and checklist quests, in English and Romanian
Character progression: 10 ranks, equipment with rarities and set bonuses
Three factions fighting a seasonal war over a territory map of real places
Leaderboards where boosts never buy rank

It's free during beta, with no ads and no purchases. Android ships as a direct APK download while we work toward the Play Store — the download page shows the file's SHA-256 so you can verify what you install. There's an itch.io mirror too, and iOS via TestFlight is close.

Site and download: https://outdare-game.com?ref=devto

Next post: the anti-cheat pipeline, and how we catch a photo of a screen pretending to be the outdoors. If you've built photo verification before, I'd genuinely like to compare notes.

DEV Community: Scripcariu Andrei

Building Outdare: a quest RPG that only works if you go outside