Wizards Hike: Walking Game

Every step you take in the real world moves your apprentice along the road to Aurmont.

Wizards Hike turns walking into a journey. Your phone already counts your steps; this app spends them on a 500-kilometre road that begins at your front door and ends far below a lake. Fifty-three stops wait along the way, across two years at a school of magic, and you reach them by walking. No timers, no energy bars, nothing to buy.

A STORY YOU SHAPE
Each stop tells a piece of the story, and ten of them hand you a decision that stays with you: the name you go by, the heart of your wand, the familiar who travels with you, the friend you share a compartment with, the house whose stone recognises you, the subject you take up, the gift you unwrap, the creature you learn to ride, the spell you drill until it answers, and what you carry home in your trunk. What you choose is written back into everything you read afterwards.

TWO YEARS, TWO ROADS
The first year runs 177 km, from your doorstep to the castle above the lake and back home again. The second runs 323 km and opens on a letter, a cracked gate and a frost nobody can explain — and ends with what sleeps under the water.

SIXTY-FOUR CARDS TO COLLECT
Every five kilometres earns you a card. Twenty-eight are wizards: the legends of this world, and a few figures from ours. Thirty-six are the creatures of the Bestiary of Aurmont, from the lake bed to the castle rafters. Duplicates happen, but the draw favours the ones you are still missing.

IT COUNTS WHILE YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE
Steps come from Health Connect, or from your phone's own step sensor if you prefer. Either way the journey advances while the app is closed, and a notification tells you when you have arrived somewhere new.

NOTHING LEAVES YOUR PHONE
Wizards Hike has no internet permission at all. It cannot send your data anywhere, because it cannot reach anywhere. There is no account, no sign-up, no advertising, no analytics and no third-party component. Your step history and your journey live in the app's own private storage, and travel only if you use Android's own backup, to your own Google account.

IN YOUR LANGUAGE
English, French and Spanish, switchable at any moment.

Walk far. The lake is a long way off.