Step Republic · the full teaser
A role-playing game you play by walking. Every step feeds a character who levels up, grows stronger, learns to fight, and carries a card you can show your friends. Put the phone in your pocket and go somewhere — the game is already playing.
01 — the engine
There is no other fuel. Steps become experience, and experience becomes levels. Steps become energy, and energy is what a fight costs. The day escalates — steps are worth more the further into it you get, so the reward lands exactly when you are deciding whether to keep going.
No step is ever worth nothing. There is no daily cap to hit and no dead zone at the top of a long walk.
| From | Your character is |
|---|---|
| 0 | walking |
| 5,000 | running |
| 10,000 | on guard, weapon drawn |
| 15,000 | charging a strike |
| 20,000 | mid-ultimate — the pose only heavy walkers ever see |
Alongside it runs the day's star ladder — silver at 5,000, gold at 10,000, then rare, epic and legendary at 15,000, 20,000 and 25,000. Stars are kept per day, so the calendar becomes a record of the walking rather than a streak you can break.
02 — combat
Every blow is steel or magic, and everyone wears two armour ratings — one against each. Damage is what gets through:
damage = power × (1 − armour ÷ (armour + 70))
So a turn is never wasted. Whatever you throw lands for something; the skill is in throwing the type their armour is thin against, and in knowing when to stop swinging and brace instead — which deals nothing at all and cuts the braced type to 15%.
You choose, your opponent chooses, and both moves land together — monsters included. Anything else would hand whoever moves second an answer, and a live duel between two people cannot work that way. The interface shows you the wall you are hitting, never the button to press.
Each class has seven moves and you carry four into a fight, chosen before it starts. In the duel every skill sits on a bar with its cost and cooldown showing, and one tap spends the turn — so you can plan the next move while watching this one land.
03 — the roster
Every class starts on the same stat total at every level — only the split differs, and a test in the codebase fails if that ever stops being true. No class is a trap and none is the correct answer; they are four different shapes of fight.
StrikerMasculine
StrikerFeminine
InfiltratorMasculine
InfiltratorFeminine
BulwarkMasculine
BulwarkFeminine
AdeptMasculine
AdeptFeminineEach is hand-drawn in both a masculine and a feminine presentation, across eleven poses — idle, walking, running, on guard, charging, a quick strike, a strong attack, a block, an ultimate, a victory and a defeat. That is 88 figures before a single monster is drawn.
All ten, each carrying its own rung of the ladder toward level 100.
Hollow Strider
Mire Hound
Ashen Golem
Carrion Wing
Mirefang Broodmother
Cinder Warden
Tide Chorus
Gilded Tyrant
Void Herald
Storm Sovereign04 — the card
Your character is a physical trading card — pale stock, a printed face, rounded corners, and a shadow that lifts it off the screen. It is the one place in an otherwise pure-black interface that spends any light.
| Rank | Reach | Then walk | The card becomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sergeant | level 1 | — | your class colour |
| Lieutenant | level 10 | 20,000 steps in one day | cold cyan |
| Captain | level 30 | 25,000 in one day | gold |
| Major | level 60 | 30,000 in one day | violet |
| General | level 100 | 30,000 in one day | red |
Reaching the level only makes a rank eligible. One enormous day is what actually spends it. And once you have held a rank you keep its colours — every rung you have climbed stays selectable, so promotion is a wardrobe rather than a replacement.
The ask stops climbing at 30,000, and that is deliberate. The top two ranks want the same day; General costs level 100 instead of a longer walk. This is a health game before it is an engagement game, and a ladder that keeps asking for more is the one mechanic here that could push somebody too far.
05 — what you wear
The ground your card is printed on. One is lit by your rank, so the same cracked stone burns cyan for a Lieutenant and red for a General. At level 50 you are handed your own class portrait, drained to greyscale, to stand in front of — the only background that is different for every player, because it is a picture of you.
What you fight in. A free ladder: you start in plain travelling clothes, a 20,000-step day wins the second once the slot opens, and level 80 hands over the third. A costume changes the drawing of your character, not a badge on it.
06 — the promise
This is enforced in code rather than in a paragraph.
Energy cannot be bought at any price — not a purchase, not a bundle, not a starter pack. If fighting could fund itself, the step counter would stop gating anything.
A paid costume and a found one are worth exactly the same stats. Free and paid read the same shared constant, and an automated test fails if anyone tries to change that.
The colour your card wears is only ever earned by walking. What money buys is a look, and a change of class. That is the list.
The game is friends duelling friends. A friend who paid beating a friend who walked would end it.
07 — one clock
The day turns over at midnight GMT+8, for every player on earth. That sounds like a detail and is not: a day that begins at a different moment on each phone cannot be compared, and comparison is the entire point of what comes next. If you are somewhere else, the app tells you what time your day resets on your own clock, with the date attached.
Written plainly because none of it exists yet, and a game that teases something it does not have is a game that lied to you first.
See which friends are online, send a challenge, and fight them there and then — your character against theirs, the gear you both walked for, the four skills you each chose. Turn for turn, live, against the actual person rather than a copy of them.
One of you requests, the other accepts, and from that moment you both have a fixed window of hours. The higher step count wins — capped at 30,000, and if you both reach it, it is a draw.
A race with no finish line between two competitive friends never ends — you can always walk a bit further, and the loser is whoever stopped first. A cap turns walk until you win into reach the line, and the draw is what keeps the last metre from becoming the race. It also means two friends of very different fitness can both get there, which is what makes the challenge worth accepting.
No coins, no loot, no experience, and nothing lost by whoever loses. Walking is the only thing in this game that makes you stronger, and a duel that paid would quietly become a better way to get ahead than going outside. Challenging a friend should never feel like a risk.
A guild is a group of friends. A war pairs two of them for 48 hours, with a day's warning first — because knowing a long walk is coming is what makes people plan one. Both sides field the same number, up to twenty, and joining is your own choice: set yourself in or out, so a week of travel or illness never means letting nineteen people down.
Rather than pooling everyone's steps into one number — which is really decided by the two strongest walkers in each guild — both rosters are ranked and paired. First against first, second against second, a point for each pairing won. The fastest walker in the world earns exactly one point, and the slowest person in the guild has an opponent they can actually beat.
A complete set of all four classes among your fielded members multiplies what your guild scores, and more complete sets multiply it further. So the strongest twenty walkers are not automatically the best twenty to field — a decision your guild gets to argue about before the war starts.
08 — your data
Step counts are health data and are treated that way. What can ever leave your phone is a derived daily total, only with your explicit consent, and never raw samples and never for advertising. Duels are designed to need your character — not your step history — so the social features cost you as little privacy as possible.
A closed beta on iOS with real step data through Apple Health. Testing is invite-only for now, so there is no download link on this page — which is deliberate: a build that needs watching should be watched by people who can be asked about it. The full combat engine with simultaneous turns and two armour types, four classes across 88 hand-drawn figures, a creature ladder reaching level 100, seven skills per class, levelling, energy, the daily star ladder, quests and errands, a shop, a bag, gear upgrades, and the hero card with ascension.
Friend duels and the accounts they need, and step counting on Android — where the pedometer only counts while the app is open, so it deliberately counts nothing rather than crediting a fraction of your real day. Costumes are wired but not yet drawn: 264 figures, landing a pose at a time.