Every part of Steplings, grouped by topic - with the real numbers behind the mechanics. A few numbers stay the trail's secret, and we say so where they do.
No sessions, no start button, no GPS. Your phone's own step counter is the whole input.
There is no session to start and no button to press. Steplings counts the steps your phone is already counting, so walking with it in your pocket is the whole game. Open the app whenever you like to see how far you got and what you found along the way.
Every 1,000 steps is about 0.8 km on the trail. Weather scales how far those steps carry you, so the same walk goes further on a clear day than in the rain. Distance you have already banked never changes afterwards - when the sky turns, only the steps from that moment on are affected.
Riding in a car, a bus or a train does not move you down the trail; the app quietly sets that time aside so only real walking counts. Small shuffles around a room do not count either - while the app is open it waits for a proper walk to get going before it starts crediting, then adds those warm-up steps back, so nothing is lost.
Your phone's own step sensor does the counting, so there is no background service and no extra battery drain. On most phones it keeps counting while Steplings is closed, and the app simply reads the total next time you open it.
This does depend on the phone - a few models stop counting once the app is closed, and steps taken then are lost rather than guessed at. Restarting your phone also clears its counter, so steps between your last look and the restart cannot be recovered.
If you have been away a long time, Steplings recovers your last 24 hours of walking rather than the whole gap. Anything older is left out instead of being dumped into one enormous day, and the app says plainly when it has done this.
Steplings asks for one permission: your phone's built-in step counter, and nothing more. It never uses GPS or your location. There is no account, no sign-in, no server and no tracking - nothing you do is sent anywhere or logged. It is free to play, with no ads and no paywalls. The one time it needs a connection is the first time you set out on a new terrain, to fetch that terrain's artwork.
Weather is the only thing that scales your steps - and here is exactly how much.
Every step is multiplied by the current sky. Sunny days push you a little further, cloud and light snow ease you back, rain and wind slow you noticeably, and a storm or a blizzard nearly brings you to a standstill. This is part of why later trails feel harder - their skies are rougher, so they ask for more real walking than their length suggests.
| Weather | Pace | 1,000 steps become |
|---|---|---|
 Sunny | ×1.1 | ~0.88 km |
 Partly cloudy | ×1.0 | ~0.80 km |
| ☁️ Cloudy | ×0.9 | ~0.72 km |
 Fog | ×0.85 | ~0.68 km |
| 🌨️ Light snow | ×0.8 | ~0.64 km |
 Rain | ×0.7 | ~0.56 km |
| 💨 Windy | ×0.6 | ~0.48 km |
 Storm | ×0.3 | ~0.24 km |
 Blizzard | ×0.05 | ~0.04 km |
Each terrain draws its weather from its own mix, and it keeps rolling on its own whether or not you are watching. You never set it. Every terrain remembers its own sky, so returning to a trail picks up where its weather left off.
How often each sky rolls on each terrain, and how long a window lasts, stays the trail's secret - the banner always tells you when the current weather will change.
A change in the weather only affects the steps you take from that moment on. Distance you have already earned is never recalculated, so a storm can never undo the kilometres you walked in the sun.
The sky follows your phone's clock through dawn, day, dusk and night, tinting the trail as it goes. Sunny never rolls after dark. Storms and blizzards ignore the hour entirely. Time of day never scales your steps - only weather does - but it does change which creatures are out.
A weather token ends the current weather early and moves you straight on to whatever was coming next. Use it from the weather banner while you walk. You can hold up to three at a time.
City first, then a choice at every tier, and finally the Alpine. There is always a choice and never a wrong order.
Finishing either trail in a tier opens the next tier. Later trails are longer and their weather is rougher, so they ask for considerably more real walking than their length alone suggests.
| Trail | Tier | Length |
|---|---|---|
 City Road | Starter | 38 km |
 Desert | Tier 2 | 71 km |
 Coastal | Tier 2 | 74 km |
 Jungle | Tier 3 | 112 km |
 Volcanic | Tier 3 | 117 km |
 Snowy Alpine | Endgame | 183 km |
Opening a trail you have never started shows a read-only overview first - nothing counts until you tap Start trail. While a trail is in progress the others wait their turn, and switching away resets the trail you leave behind, so the app asks you to confirm before it happens.
Every trail has four named checkpoints, at roughly a quarter, half, three-quarters and the finish. Reaching one brings up a card with its name and a line of the trail's story. They are also the most generous moments on a walk: you are likeliest to meet a creature there, a Glimmer can turn up, a journal page is waiting, and you are offered a selfie.
Finishing marks the trail complete, unlocks the next terrain and hands you an egg from the land you just walked. You also get a guaranteed Glimmer, and any curios you were still holding from that terrain turn into Seeds automatically.
Any finished trail can be walked again. Progress starts from zero, checkpoints come back, the weather carries on as it was, and a lap counter tracks how many times you have done it. Achievements are not awarded twice, but every finish still grants its egg, its Glimmer and its Seed conversion.
On Android, each terrain past City fetches its artwork and sound the first time you set out on it. It is a few megabytes, it happens once per terrain, and it is the only moment Steplings needs a connection. If it fails you can simply try again - nothing else in the game waits on it.
A streak that forgives, and a daily target that adapts to you instead of the other way round.
Any day you walk at least 1,000 steps keeps your streak alive - counted in plain steps, so weather never threatens it. Days run on your phone's local clock and roll over at midnight. Your best streak is kept forever and never drops, whatever happens to the current one.
Missing a day does not automatically end a run. One rest day per week is forgiven, so life can happen without punishing you - the day simply does not add to the streak. A second miss in the same week does reset it, as does missing two days in a row.
Today's Trailmark is a gentle daily target, shown in kilometres, that adjusts to how much you have been walking lately: it matches your own 7-day average, rounded to a friendly number, and never asks for less than about 1,250 steps or more than about 3,750 (roughly 1 to 3 km). It is measured in plain steps, so weather never makes today's target harder. It is set once at the start of each day, and it always sits a little above the streak threshold - which means hitting your Trailmark secures your streak day too.
Walk comfortably past your recent average - about 1.3 times it - and the day is marked as a great one, with a bigger card and a warmer sound. It is recognition rather than a reward: nothing is granted for it, and it never asks you to walk further than you meant to.
One number, 1 to 100, that never resets and is never spent.
Your Wanderer Level is a single number, from 1 to 100, measuring every kilometre you have ever walked across every trail. It never resets and it is never spent.
The higher your level, the likelier a creature you meet decides to stay with you. That is its only mechanical effect - it does not scale your distance, your finds or your pets.
The exact stay-with-you odds at each level are one of the numbers we keep to ourselves.
Early levels come quickly, so the first days feel rewarding, and later ones ask for progressively more. Level 10 lands after about 20 km - a few days for most walkers - and the whole climb to level 100 is 1,820 lifetime km, about a year at 5 km a day. Reaching a round number (10, 25, 50, 100) is marked with a bigger celebration.
| Levels | km per level | Levels | km per level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 - 10 | 2 km | 51 - 60 | 20 km |
| 11 - 20 | 4 km | 61 - 70 | 24 km |
| 21 - 30 | 8 km | 71 - 80 | 28 km |
| 31 - 40 | 12 km | 81 - 90 | 32 km |
| 41 - 50 | 16 km | 91 - 100 | 36 km |
47 species across six terrains. No capture button, no timing minigame - just walking, and a little luck.
Creatures appear as you walk. There is no capture button and nothing to react to in time - whether one stays with you is decided for you, and your Wanderer Level is what improves those odds. Some join you, some watch for a moment and slip away.
You are likelier to meet one at a checkpoint, and finishing a trail always brings one. Duplicates are welcome, since they are what Shine is built from. There is a limit of 2 new companions a day and 10 in a week; past that, everyone you see simply slips away.
Every pet is Common, Rare, Epic or Legendary, and its rarity is fixed by its species - a given creature is always the same rarity. You can read it from the ring around its portrait: grey, blue, purple, gold. Rarity is a ceiling rather than a power level: it sets how far a pet can be blossomed, and through that how deeply it can talk. It is the one fixed thing that can be changed later, by Shining.
How often each rarity turns up is kept vague on purpose - Legendaries are meant to feel like weather, not math.
Cheerful, Sarcastic, Dramatic, Curious, Chill, Grumpy and Coach. Each pet is given one at random the moment you meet it, with nothing to do with its species or its rarity, so two of the same creature can be nothing alike. A personality never changes however much a pet grows - it is the voice everything else gets said in.
Pets gain levels simply because you walk. Your active companion earns at double rate, and every other pet you own gains at the same time, so nobody is left behind while you focus on one. Levels run to 100. A pet's level is not a power stat - all it does is open the next Blossom.
Weather and time of day decide who is out. Each trail has its own cast, and some species only come out after dark. Every trail also has one Legendary that appears in a single kind of weather and no other - a genuine chase, and the best reason to walk in a storm. Clear skies, fog, and dawn or dusk all make sightings likelier; deep night is quieter, but it has residents you will not meet at any other hour.
Sighting chances per kilometre - and how much a checkpoint, the right sky or a wanderer's tip raises them - stay under the hood.
Every path forward is paved with real kilometres - and here is exactly how many.
Blossoming matures a companion - it keeps the same species, name and personality; it never becomes a different creature. What changes is depth: the pet talks in more, and richer, ways, and its artwork opens into a new look. To blossom, a pet needs a level milestone, a short dedicated walk with you, and Seeds from its home terrain. Rarity is the ceiling: Common pets do not blossom, a Rare can blossom once, an Epic twice, a Legendary all three times.
| Blossom | Pet level | Dedicated walk | Seeds (home terrain) | Needs rarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First | 20 | 5 km | 3 | Rare + |
| Second | 40 | 7 km | 5 | Epic + |
| Third | 80 | 10 km | 8 | Legendary |
Shining raises a pet's rarity by merging identical copies of it - same species and personality - into a single, rarer companion. Each Shine also spends one Glimmer and a short dedicated walk. A rarer pet can talk more deeply, so a Shined companion can then blossom even further. Nothing about the pet's identity changes, and the copies are only used up when the walk finishes. Legendary pets are already at the top and do not Shine.
| Merge | Identical copies | Dedicated walk | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common → Rare | 2 | 3 km | 1 Glimmer |
| Rare → Epic | 3 | 5 km | 1 Glimmer |
| Epic → Legendary | 4 | 8 km | 1 Glimmer |
Bonding is simply the days you and a companion have spent walking together - it grows by at most one per day, so it can never be farmed, only lived. Giving a Pet Treat can let a rest day still count. Bonding is pure warmth - fonder dialogue and lore, never a stat boost - and the day count keeps climbing long after the last rank. "1,204 days together."
| Rank | Days together |
|---|---|
| Newfound | the day you meet |
| Kindred | 7 |
| Confidant | 30 |
| Waybound | 90 |
| Soulbound | 180 |
| Companion | 365 |
Three things decide what a companion says. Its personality is the voice: a grumpy pet is still grumpy at six months, and that contrast is the point. Its rarity and blossoms set which subjects it can reach, from simple encouragement up to remembering your walks together - once a pet is deep enough an Ask button appears beside it. Its bond sets the warmth: the same greeting gets fonder as the days add up. Each species also has its own small call, which plays under whatever it is saying.
Each species carries a backstory in six parts, and your bond is what opens it. The first is a hook the moment you meet - something the pet is not telling you - and the rest arrive one per rank: where it came from, what it left behind, why it walks, the thing it never told anyone, and at last the whole story. It unlocks per pet rather than per species, so every one you raise earns its own telling.
Eggs hatch by walking - 1 to 2 km each. You are given one at the very start, and every trail you finish hands you another from that terrain. An egg shows only where it came from; what is inside is decided at the moment it hatches, so it can be any rarity. Hatching does not count against your daily limit on new companions, and there is no limit on how many eggs you can keep waiting.
A Focused Walk is how you commit to one companion goal - hatching an egg, blossoming a pet, or shining one - and your walking distance counts toward it. Only one runs at a time, so choosing a focus means setting the others aside for now. Good weather speeds these walks up, since they count weather-scaled kilometres. You can switch focus whenever you like without losing progress, and any cost is only spent when the goal is reached.
Small keepsakes that quietly become the fuel for everything your companions grow on.
Each terrain has three small keepsakes to turn up, every one with a line of flavour the first time you find it. They come often while you are still working through a trail for the first time, and much more rarely once it is finished - though walking it again still turns one up now and then. Finding a kind of curio is remembered forever, even after you have spent every one you held.
Seeds are what a pet blossoms on, and they belong to a terrain: a City Seed and an Alpine Seed are different things, and a pet blossoms only on Seeds from the land it came from. Trade any curio for one Seed of its terrain whenever you like, and every time you finish a trail your leftover curios from that terrain convert automatically, so nothing goes to waste.
Every achievement tier you earn also hands you a Seedling. Unlike Seeds, a Seedling belongs to no terrain at all - gather twenty and you can turn them into a single Seed of whichever terrain you choose. It is the one way to grow a companion from a land you have not been walking lately, and a quiet second use for milestones you were going to reach anyway.
Glimmers are the rare currency behind Shine - one per Shine. Every trail you finish grants one guaranteed, and checkpoints turn one up occasionally. They are deliberately scarce: they are what paces how quickly a pet's rarity can climb, and a steady walker sees roughly one a month beyond the guaranteed ones.
Now and then a supply drop turns up as you walk, holding one of two things. A weather token ends the current weather early. A pet treat lets a rest day still count toward your bond with your active companion, because feeding one is spending time with it. If you are already holding three weather tokens a drop gives you a treat instead, so a drop is never wasted.
Exactly how often curios, drops and checkpoint Glimmers roll is part of the trail's quiet mathematics - the guide keeps those odds to itself.
A story you collect by walking - and none of it can be missed.
Every trail carries a chapter of Finding Ana - the story of a young walker named Theo, following his sister Ana down these same trails. Why she left, and what he finds along the way, is the story itself - so that is all this guide will say.
You collect the story as pages simply by walking. Every page of the main story is a fixed milestone on the trail: one near the start, one at each checkpoint, and the rest at set distances between them. None of it is random, and no part of the story can be missed.
There is one more page per trail that is not guaranteed. It appears only while that trail's rarest weather is out, and it is backstory rather than plot - so chasing it is entirely optional, and it is still findable on a later lap.
Pages are read in the Journal, grouped by chapter with a recap at the top of each. Finish a trail and its whole chapter unlocks as one continuous story to read straight through. Chapters you have not reached stay closed, and trails you chose not to walk are quietly noted as still out there.
The story ends where the last trail does. Your first Alpine finish plays it out on its own - nothing to collect, nothing to unlock first, and nothing more said about it here.
The trail is quieter the further you go - which makes every meeting rarer, and worth more.
Other walkers cross your path from time to time and share what they know about the local wildlife, and that tip briefly makes creatures easier to spot. You will meet at most one a day. Some are locals who stay on their own terrain, and a few travel everywhere and remember you - the emptier the trail, the rarer any meeting is.
Four rare things can happen on a walk: a meteor shower, an aurora, a flash flood and a shimmering desert mirage, each with its own conditions of place, weather and hour. A meteor shower or an aurora briefly lifts your chances of meeting something legendary. At most one happens in a day.
Three places only reveal themselves in the right conditions: an abandoned campfire after dark, a checkpoint that appears only in fog and leaves no mark on the map, and a rainbow bridge in the short window after a storm clears. Finding one is permanent for that trail.
Everything you meet out there is kept in the Almanac - wanderers, rare events and hidden places, each with its artwork and its line. Anything you have not found yet shows only as a question mark, so nothing is spoiled ahead of time.
When and how often any of this appears is the part of the game we will never print. Walk in strange weather at strange hours, and the trail will show you.
Trails, weather, distance and consistency, exploration, companions - and a handful of secrets.
Milestones across six areas: finishing trails, walking through weather, distance and consistency, exploration and discovery, your companions, and a handful of secret feats. You will find them all in the Achievements tab of Treasures.
Beyond the badge, every tier you earn hands you a Seedling. Twenty Seedlings become one Seed of any terrain you like, so the milestones you were going to reach anyway quietly feed your companions' growth.
Most come in bronze, silver and gold, awarded as you go deeper into the same thing. Only the next tier is shown, so the ladder reveals itself as you climb it. Once a tier is earned it is yours permanently - nothing you do later, including using a pet up in a Shine, can take it back.
Where an achievement asks you to walk during something, it means walking with the app open at the time, and a few hundred steps is enough. Distance-based weather achievements work differently: those count the kilometres you banked while that weather was out, including any recovered afterwards.
A handful stay hidden until they happen, showing only a question mark. They give away neither their name nor what they want, and they are meant to be stumbled into rather than hunted.
Their names and conditions are the guide's firmest secret. No hints, not even here.
Big moments show as a card while you walk. If a single walk earns a lot at once the achievements step aside and arrive as a number on the Treasures tab instead - open it and each one plays as its own card, so nothing is ever missed.
Everything is made on your device, and nothing is uploaded anywhere.
Take a photo at any point on a walk from the camera button, add a short note if you want, and it is saved to that trail's own gallery. There is no limit on how many, and notes can be edited later.
At the start of a trail, at every checkpoint, at a finish and at rare moments out on the trail, you are offered a selfie framed with the scenery. You can either take a real photo with the camera or make a composed card with your companion posed in the scene - the composed card always works, even with no camera available.
Each trail keeps its own strip of photos on its detail screen, newest first. Tap one to open it full screen, swipe between them, pinch to zoom, and edit, share or delete from there.
Some moments make a card worth keeping: a blossom, a new bond rank, a Shine, and finishing a trail. Sharing hands it to your phone's normal share sheet. Nothing is uploaded anywhere - the image is made on your device at the moment you tap.
Four tabs, and everything in this guide is at most two taps from one of them.
World Map is home: the six trails and how they unlock. Pets is your companions, your eggs and your Focused Walk. Field Notes is the record of your journey. Treasures is everything you have gathered and earned.
Treasures holds two tabs. Collection is your Glimmers, Pet Treats and Weather Tokens, plus each terrain's Seeds and the curios you have turned up there - tap anything to read what it does. Achievements is the full list, filtered by area. A number on the tab means newly earned achievements are waiting for you.
Field Notes gathers four records. The Journal is the story, with a dot on the tab when a page is unread. Trail Log is a month of walked days, each stamped with its weather and flagged when you hit your Trailmark. Activity is a running feed of notable moments. Almanac is the gallery of wanderers, events and hidden places.
Both live behind the gear in the top corner of the World Map - the in-app version of this guide is always there, in all six languages the game speaks.
Exactly two kinds of notification exist, both optional and both off until you turn them on.
The first is a heads-up when notable weather - a blizzard, a storm or clear skies - is about to arrive on the trail you are walking. Everything milder passes without a word.
The second is one daily reminder, at a time you choose, naming that day's Trailmark target. If you have already hit it the reminder stays quiet and moves to tomorrow. It is off by default and set for the evening.
Checkpoints, trail completions and everything you find are shown inside the app, never as a notification. There is no background service, so the app only learns you crossed a checkpoint when you next open it - which is exactly when it tells you. Nothing is ever lost, only saved up.
Each terrain has an ambient bed that plays quietly under your walk and shifts with the weather, and every species has its own short call that plays whenever it speaks. Signature moments have their own sounds and their own feel in your hand. Sound effects and haptics each have a switch in Settings, and there is a mute button on the walk itself.
The trail scene drifts gently while you walk. If you would rather it held still, the button in the top corner of the walking screen stops it for now. It is not remembered between visits.
No account, no cloud, nothing sent anywhere - which also means the save file is yours to keep safe.
Everything Steplings knows lives on your phone. There is no account to make, no cloud to sync with, nothing sent anywhere and nothing logged. That also means nothing is backed up for you.
Steplings speaks English, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and German. Pick one in Settings or leave it following your phone; it changes immediately, with no restart.
Export writes a save file you can keep somewhere safe or move to a new phone, and asks whether to bundle your photos with it - with them it becomes a zip, without them a small plain file. Import replaces everything you currently have, so it shows you what is in the file and asks you to confirm. This is the only way to carry progress through a reinstall.
Saves are checked for tampering. A file that has been edited by hand is refused rather than loaded, so a broken or hand-written save can never quietly overwrite a real one.
Settings shows how many photos are on your device and how much room they take. Deleting one from its viewer removes the file itself, not just the entry.
Steplings is free, with no ads, no paywalls and nothing locked behind a purchase. If you would like to leave a tip anyway there is a Tip Jar in Settings - it grants nothing in the game and never will. There is also a link there to send feedback by email.
That's the whole game
Everything above happens on its own the moment you head out the door with your phone in your pocket.
Back to the trail