Ever felt like enhancing your running experience? Making the whole activity a more desirable and fun one can help you keep up with your running routine without finding any excuses.

Sure, everybody has their own motivation triggers. For some it’s picturing themselves at their ideal desired weight, for others it’s just the fact of staying fit and healthy. Others quote music as keeping them going. However, fear can also act as a powerful trigger.

And when fear is combined with the fun of a game and the feeling that you’re doing something that is actually helping other people (at least in a virtual world and just for a moment), then that may be a great source of motivation. That’s exactly what Kickstarter project Zombies, Run! by Six to Start and Naomi Alderman intends to do.

You might say that there are a lot of fitness apps and music tracks out there, designed to help and both the professional marathon runner and the occasional jogger alike. Truth is, most of these apps are designed to help you be more organized or keep track of your running route, or, in best case to act as a personal coach. But it’s up to you to stay motivated.

That’s what makes Zombies, Run! different than other running apps. It doesn’t matter how, when, where or how fast you run, as long as you keep running. All you need is your smartphone and a pair of headphones, so that you can hear the instructions of the game. And you don’t even have to look at the screen while running.

The idea of the game is that you are one of the few survivors of a zombie apocalypse and you’re helping rebuild a civilization by collection certain vital resources. As you hear the terrifying sound of the zombies chasing you, you listen to the story unfolding in your headphones and you receive orders and instructions about your tasks.

Best part is that the game does not focus on running as a fitness achievement or competition – you can start and stop whenever you want, and you can run in any location or route – but on saving the world through your courage and the decisions that you make.

The app also registers other conventional parameters such as distance, time or calories. Once you arrive home after your run, you get to manage the supplies you gathered and assign them to your bases. Depending on your choices, the missions can get more and more exciting and complicated and the course of the story can change.

For the moment, Zombies, Run! is under development for iPhone and Android. To whom will this running game and audio adventure appeal more: the passionate road runner, the sedentary gamer, or the beginner jogger?

Photos and featured image from the Zombies, Run! Kickstarter page