Zombies, Run!

My all time favourite app is Zombies, Run! by Six to Start. It's a fitness app that encourages exercise by immersing the user in a second-person narrative.

You are Runner Five, a silent protagonist with a mysterious past, who has been airdropped into a small refuge of survivors of the zombie apocalypse. It's not surprising that the sound of rattling breath and groaning coming through your headphones is a powerful motivator to keep running!

After arriving at the township you are sent on various missions to collect supplies for the survivors and even lead packs of zombies away from the town whilst the gate is under repair. During these missions you are in contact with various characters from the township who all have their own complicated lives and agendas.

Six to Start clearly have their main strength in the storytelling and narrative part of the app -- the interface can be a bit buggy and syncing your runs with their server, ZombieLink, involves more madness than method. Still, it has proved popular enough to warrant a second season of missions and reports say that they are currently working on a third.

I highly recommend this app for anyone who would like to go running but never feels that motivated enough to just get out there and do it. For beginners who want to train up a bit first, there is a 'couch to 5km' app by the same people called Zombies, Run! 5k Training. I've played through the whole of that and it was well worth the money.

Stay safe out there.