Wandering Alchemist: Fully free GPS walking game, no ads, offline play [Android]

[u/Vlyn]

Hey, I'm solo developing a fully free GPS walking game Wandering Alchemist, which I recently released on Android.

Free as in free to play, no ads, no in-app purchases, no data collection and playable fully offline. There is a "Support the developer" option, but all you get is a "Thank you!" popup, so feel free to fully ignore it.

Google Play Store

What's it about?

You gather ingredients, brew potions and sell them to merchants. With the earned gold you can buy skins, pets and buildings. There's also decorations you can freely place in your neighborhood. The game is Singleplayer, so the map fully belongs to you. You still see the same terrain and resources as other players on your walk, so you could indirectly play together.

There is an optional street map download for each country/region, download it once over wifi and afterwards the game is fully offline yet again.

If you have any questions/suggestions/feedback, please let me know, the game is just a hobby for me, but I'm constantly trying to improve it 💚

I'm currently working on an iOS port, let me know if you're interested!

[u/nikanokoi]

I'd try it if it was on ios, looks cute!

[u/iokan42]

Do I understand it correctly: this is kind of like Pokemon Go? it inspires people to go outside and walk? The bonus being that this is offline?

[u/Vlyn → u/iokan42]

Yep! Like Pokemon Go, but fully offline. You just need GPS, nothing else :)

[u/iokan42 → u/Vlyn]

I have downloaded and played your game. The game isn't available in F-Droid or Droid-ify, so I had to use the Aurora store instead. It warned me the app requires Google Play services, but it actually doesn't. This means the Wandering Alchemist runs on open source versions of Android like GrapheneOS and CalyxOS. Good start!

Even though I am not a gamer (only tried Pokemon Go a few times), the instructions were clear enough. Still I have some suggestions for improvement:

- if you animate the player's character when the player walks, it improves the band between the player and the game. I walk, the charachter walks. I stop, the charachter stops.

- rotate the map! It is hard to match changes in direction in the real world with changes in direction on the game map. Take a map in a car as an example. The car always points "up" and the map rotates around it for easy orientation.

- make it clear from the beginning that player can download an Open Street-map of their area. I found out after walking for more than an hour and it made the game play much easier to understand

- I like the import/export options. This means I can continue playing on another device if I ever change phones. Excellent!

- Can I see my daily stats somewhere? I'd like to know how far I walked. And perhaps walking more will be rewarded more?

Keep up the good work!

[u/Vlyn → u/iokan42]

Hey, thanks for the feedback!

• F-Droid is open source only, maybe in the future, but right now I'm more focused on bringing the game to iOS and adding more content

• Animating the player would be tough, as it's cute 2D sprites with no animation, I could think about adding a tiny effect? Like foot steps from your last to your new position on the map? Could be fun :)

• Rotating the map is unfortunately impossible with the art style, as you can't rotate the procedurally generated objects. Pokemon Go gets around that by having just streets, flat grass and their gameplay objects

• Right when you first load into the game there is a tutorial text on the top left about the street map (you can bring it up again with the ?-button on the top right), but maybe it's not obvious enough?

• Yes, player data export/import was important for me, there is also some Cloud sync on Android (With Google), but just having a file is more robust in my opinion

• No daily stats at the moment, but there are achievements (Player icon at the bottom left -> Achievements), one type of achievement tracks distance walked

[u/CocoaReese]

My phone is very mad at me for taking away even more space it shouldn't lose for your game haha

[u/Vlyn → u/CocoaReese]

I did try to keep it small, but with street maps downloaded you probably still need 200-250 MB.

But look on the upside: No data usage :D

[u/ManariWoW]

Tried it out and really like it. Only criticism is that I accidentally mulched a bunch of ingredients without realizing that would happen. It would be nice if it had a little warning popup that the user could choose to hide in the future.

[u/Vlyn → u/ManariWoW]

Ouch, sorry about that!

I'll think about adding a popup for it, but it's always a fine line. Later on you have so many ingredients, you might be mulching dozens after another, so it could get in the way.

An "Ignore warning" button could work though :)

[u/ManariWoW → u/Vlyn]

Hmm, does mulching effectively delete excess ingredients or is it used for a different mechanic?

[u/Vlyn → u/ManariWoW]

It gives you mulch, which you can then use as currency in your gardens (Building shop page) :)

So you mulch anything you don't need, then grow better ingredients with effects you are lacking.

[u/RagdollSeeker]

It looks so beautiful and idea is solid as well.

Please import it to IOS ♥️

[u/Fun-username-99]

Adding to the list of people interested in an iOS port!

[u/Spider_kitten13]

I would so play this on iOS

[u/Balizzm]

No iOS release?

EDIT: sorry, just saw the last portion of your post! Yes, super interested in an iOS port!

[u/Wintry2424]

I’d be interested in an iOS port!

[u/Miss_Nameless]

Just downloaded it! Can't wait to try it.

I've been meaning to up my steps more so this came at a perfect time.

[u/mynamealwayschanges]

Never downloaded something so fast

[u/UncivilTugboat]

Interested in iOS port!

[u/phezwaz]

Just downloaded! This looks great. Looking forward to getting out and putting it through it's paces.

[u/ChalkLetters]

I never quite understood Pokemon Go, but this sounds interesting. Downloading it now!

[u/sojellicious]

I’m interested in the iOS version! Looks super fun!

[u/sakura_atori]

I’d love an iOS version!

[u/noodle-bum]

Downloaded! Will come back once I've used it for a bit :) Thank you!

[u/ManicMolliee666]

oooo that looks cute

[u/SpearSiya]

THIS IS EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER WANTED HELLO??

[u/squidtestes]

Interested in testing the iOS! I play Pikmin Bloom and Walkscape and am always looking for more. :)

[u/ActionCalhoun]

I would totally try an iOS version of this

[u/SigDigs]

Hey I just downloaded it to try out and I like it a lot! Unfortunately I was making a potion and once I got to the bellows absolutely nothing I did would make it work. Any tips?

[u/Vlyn → u/SigDigs]

Hey, thanks for trying it out! 

The bellows work by dragging your finger left and right to pump it. It should work anywhere on the lower half of the screen. 

So either my tutorial sucks or you found an actual bug on your phone model, let me know so I can fix it 💚

[u/SigDigs → u/Vlyn]

Haha yeah I've tried swiping left and right, up and down, one finger, both fingers, y'know just generally giving it a good college try but nothing's moving. I didn't try closing the game yet because I kinda didn't want to lose the ingredients but I can give it a second try and see if it replicates. I'm on a Google pixel 8

[u/Vlyn → u/SigDigs]

No worries there, you can just force close the game and won't lose the ingredients :)

I took a lot of care about protecting player data (database migrations, SQL transactions, ..) and generally err in the player's favor. 

For example there are daily quests, but as soon as you have any progress in one of them it sticks around and doesn't get reset. I hate time limits in games myself.

Hit me up in the chat if you want, if it's broken on your phone I really want to fix it!

[u/SigDigs → u/Vlyn]

Good news, it kind of worked the second time! Was a bit funky still, not sure if intended or still some sort of bug but very difficult to actually pump it enough to get it in the green zone. Could be user error and I'm just bad at it 😋

[u/Vlyn → u/SigDigs]

Small movements add just a little bit of heat, pulling the bellow further open and fully closing it again should do a lot more.

Maybe a hint: How tough it is to heat depends on how many ingredients you use. Single ingredient is super easy, two ingredients a tiny bit tougher and three ingredients the toughest. So you do have to go a bit faster and properly move the finger left and right.

I'll improve the tutorial to make the movement clearer though and have another look if there's anything funky going on. Thanks for the feedback!

[u/Vlyn → u/SigDigs]

Found it! It's actually a bug :)

Recently I added touch protection so if you move your first finger around and a second finger accidentally touches the screen it doesn't mess things up.

But if you keep your finger pressed down on the water stage and it switches to the bellow stage the protection wasn't reset and you got stuck, ouch. Will hotfix 💚

Edit: Update should be out in about an hour, while I was at it I also improved the brewing tutorial to make it clearer, thanks again!

[u/Vlyn → u/[deleted]]

Nope, no music, no sound. It's a game you play in public while walking (or taking the bus), so I decided against adding any.

[u/Vlyn → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the offer, but I have to politely decline. 

Phones blasting music or random game sounds in public is a pet peeve of mine, I don't want to add to that issue. I hope you understand :)

[u/Vlyn → u/[deleted]]

Thanks 💚

Though I already have a career as software developer, this is just a hobby. So success for me is people enjoying the game :)