Elevator Pitch

Run An Empire is a strategy running game for mobile that’s based in the real world.

Players compete to own the most territory in their neighbourhood by physically running around it. We’re taking the best bits from free-to-play gaming and fitness trackers and bringing them together to make an addictive play experience for recreational runners and gamers alike.

Progress

We launched Run an Empire to 1000 of our community in a closed beta in spring 2014 and we now have players in 34 countries who have completed over 6000 runs. Those same players have opened the app 18,770 times and captured 368,527 tiles. 

Company History

We saw that the fitness app market was largely limited to counting calories and measuring miles. The growing mobile gaming market, on the other hand, suggested far more exciting opportunities to motivate and reward existing and aspiring runners. Run An Empire was born in 2014, designed to lead a whole new industry of multiplayer online sports, where players physically compete and collaborate in the real world using their mobile phones.

As founders we are passionate gamers ourselves, with a history of making games and playful experiences on the streets of cities worldwide, from Moscow to Tokyo and Austin to Singapore. We first met as designers at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2007 and realised we both had a passion for how design principles could influence user-experience in all manner of other disciplines. That combined with a shared interest in game systems meant we quickly ended up working together. In 2011 we set up a design studio PAN and began to apply our skills for clients like Marks and Spencer, London Design Museum, and the Houses of Parliament. We won numerous awards for our 2013 project Hello Lamp Post including the Designs of the Year exhibition.