Jack Feist, age 21, is a junior at the UO majoring in Business with a focus in Entrepreneurship and marketing. Jack enjoys attending local markets as well as cooking up new recipes in his kitchen. He also enjoys a good morning run or spending time outdoors.
Born and raised in Eugene Oregon, Jack attended Sheldon High School, where, during his sophomore year, he initially came up with the idea for Man_Hunt. “It’s a tag game that uses location sharing on people’s phones so you can track down the people you’re trying to tag,” Jack says. At Sheldon, Jack and his friends were involved with cross country and track, so it was not uncommon for them, in their free time, to play games that were active. The group as a whole all had a love for running, as well as spending most of their time outdoors.
“The rules of Man_Hunt are simple. You and your friends split into two teams, one of which is the ‘Hunters’, and the other the ‘Targets‘. For the duration of the match, the targets must evade the hunters. At regular intervals the locations of all the targets will be pinned on the hunters’ phones, and the hunters need to try to tag everyone on the target team before the end of the match.” Jack says.
The targets have about a 30 second head start before the hunters are allowed to start tracking them down. The average time for one game would last about 45 minutes. The hunters can use any form of transportation to hunt down the targets, including; bikes, cars, and public transportation. While the targets were only allowed to be on foot.
In fall of 2023, Jack decided to start taking Man_Hunt to the next level by turning it into an app. It took about five months of development before the app was ready to be released on the app store in February of this year. “Back in high school, we had used the iPhone’s Shortcuts App to automate sending our locations to each other. It worked, but it was finicky and a pain to set up. That was the big driver for me making the app. I wanted it to be easier for everyone to play,” Jack said. The target audience for the app are people between the ages of 16 to 22 years old, who like to stay active. Man_Hunt allows you to play with friends as long as everyone has the app downloaded and ready to go!
Recently Jack was awarded funds from the Oregon Innovation Challenge through the business school. These funds will go towards promoting the app as well as future development for Man_Hunt Pro; an expansion of features in the base app. The estimated release date for Man_Hunt Pro is towards the end of May. “By paying for Man_Hunt Pro, as opposed to the regular free version of Man_Hunt, you get a lot more options for match customization. It allows the people who really enjoy Man_Hunt to better tailor the game to their needs,” Jack says. The new update will have lots of new match options such as; allowing the targets to become hunters once they are tagged, giving the targets access to see the same map that the hunters use in order to get farther away from them, and the ability to restrict the area that the game is being played in.
In the future, Jack hopes Man_Hunt will continue to grow! “My vision for the future is to have Man_Hunt become a staple game. I hope to be driving down the street some night and see a group of people chasing each other around playing Man_Hunt, hopefully not in the middle of the street or anything,” Jack says. Starting off as just a fun game to play with his friends, Man_Hunt is growing bigger than Jack could have ever imagined. “Honestly, just being able to play with my friends using the Man_Hunt app, it already feels like a success. Anything else is just a bonus” says Jack.
If you are interested in playing Man_Hunt, it is available on the app store for free and is ready to download!
