Gameplay

How real steps become combat, and the rules that keep the game honest.

The core loop

You start at 1 damage per step. Each newly approved step is one attack and visibly changes the current target.
Each attack damages the current enemy. Defeating it awards gold once; the next enemy steps in.
Spend play-earned gold on hero upgrades and levels that raise the damage of future steps.
Each area holds 5 normal enemies and 1 boss. Beating the boss unlocks the next area — no timers, no deadlines.
Every 10 areas form a biome; the biome’s last area is guarded by an “Elder” boss worth 10× gold.
Deep in the game you may ascend: reset the run for permanent renown damage.

The screen is one fixed, non-scrolling battle view — hero versus enemy, exact counters for steps, gold and enemy HP — with menus that open as overlays over the fight. Nothing requires interaction while you are actually walking.

Step accounting

Steps reach the game through Health Connect, Android’s on-device health store:

The app reads aggregate StepsRecord.COUNT_TOTAL per daily bucket. Health Connect’s own priority system deduplicates phone and watch — the game never sums raw records from both.
Each bucket keeps a high-water mark. Only growth above the stored mark is credited, exactly once. A later correction downward credits nothing and never claws back what you earned.
Steps can be imported in the background while the app is closed; only newly approved steps cause combat progress.
Late-arriving watch data, manual entries and corrections are an active design area (policy not final).

Delayed ≠ zero

If Health Connect has not delivered a walk yet, the game shows “not imported yet” and the time of the last check — never a fake zero.

The auto-attack switch

Auto-attack is on by default: every newly approved step resolves as one attack the moment its data arrives.

Turn it off (Steps & status › “Auto-attack with steps”) and new steps are still credited and shown, but they wait as saved attacks — the battle plate says so. While paused:

Strike releases one saved step as one attack.
All releases every saved step, one attack each.
Turning auto-attack back on resolves all saved steps at once.

A tap can only ever release a step you already walked — it can never create an attack, mint steps, or add idle damage. The pause state survives restarts.

Fairness invariants

These rules are the game’s constitution; every feature is checked against them:

Invariant	Meaning
One step, one attack	Approved steps = attacks resolved (+ saved ones if paused). Taps, time, app launches, animations, retries and sync can never create actions, gold or progress.
Visible from step one	Every credited step visibly moves a counter or an enemy. No threshold (including 6,000 steps) can hide early progress.
Exactly-once rewards	A victory pays once — after crashes, restarts, replayed uploads or restores.
Free forever	No IAP, subscriptions, paid unlocks, premium currency or ads. Gold exists only from walking-driven play.
No idle automation	No idle DPS, no auto-clickers, no timers, no offline production, no waiting mechanics.
Rest is safe	No streaks, decay, timed bosses or rest-day penalties.
Bounded arithmetic	Damage saturates at 10¹⁵ and gold at 4·10¹⁸; balances can never go negative or overflow — a long walk is never refused.
Deterministic combat	Same prior state + same operation = same result, on your phone and on the sync server alike.

Rules versions (v1 → v3)

The economy has been rebalanced twice. Old operation logs still replay byte-for-byte, so each profile carries a rules version and moves forward only through explicit one-time conversions.

	v1 — prototype	v2 — endless economy	v3 — current
Enemy health	area × 10 (linear)	10 at area 1, +25%/area to area 100, then +10%, capped at 10¹⁵	same as v2
Rewards	normal area × 5, boss area × 20	normal ⌈health ÷ 2⌉, boss 4×, biome boss 10×	same as v2
Hero levels	—	endless per-hero levels (10 base cost, +10%/level, ×2 every 25 levels, max 400/run)	same as v2
Ascension opens	Area 11	Area 11	Area 50
Renown per ascension	1 point (+10% each)	area − 10 points (+25% each)	⌊(a − 10)² ÷ 10⌋ total, banked from the deepest run (+25% each)

Why v3: under v2, ascending daily beat walking deeper (every ascension paid even for a shallow run). v3 makes ascension a late-game move — renown is banked from your deepest run, so a shallower repeat earns nothing until you beat your record.

Simulation snapshot (8,000 steps/day, greedy Wanderer)

Under v3: first ascension around day 7 (area ~82, 250 renown); area ~91 after 14 days, ~101 after 90 days with ascension. Without ascension: area ~47 on day 1, ~72 after a month. All figures provisional, from the balance simulator.