Rucksack: The Walking Road

A step counter resets at midnight. A road does not.

Rucksack takes the walking you were already doing and spends it on distance. Every 1,300 steps carry a small hooded wanderer one kilometre further along an authored road across Elsewhere, a hand-drawn continent of 3,500 kilometres. Nothing you walk is ever taken back, and the map has an end you can actually reach.

A CONTINENT, NOT A CHART
Eleven regions, one road, 109 named places. The windmills and rope ferries of the Reedlands. The white flats of the Salt Road. Drowned bell towers standing out of Lake Ithra. The Sighing Pass, where the wind between two rocks sounds like something enormous breathing. The lantern line across the Amber Fen, the working lights of the coast, the orchards, and finally the last stair up to Cael-on-the-Mountain. The map is drawn in ink and watercolour by the app itself, and everything ahead of you stays under a cartographer's fog until your own feet lift it.

IT COUNTS WHILE YOU LIVE
Rucksack reads the step counter built into your phone. It keeps counting while the app is closed, so the walk to the shop, the school run and the long way home all move you. Open the app in the morning and your wanderer has already moved: progress happened without you, which is the whole idea. No step counter on your phone, or would rather not grant it? Write today's number into the ledger by hand instead.

CAMP EVERY NIGHT
Wherever your distance runs out, your wanderer makes camp, and the camp is the daily reward: a painted vignette of that spot with the fire lit, the weather of Elsewhere over it, and today's kilometres written into the journal. Break camp in the morning and the travelogue writes the day down for you. Rain over the Reedlands. Passed Sallow Bridge. The tinker's wheel is fixed.

THE PEOPLE ON THE ROAD
Forty one encounters with fourteen recurring characters, gated by kilometres rather than taps. Marn the tinker, who is always somehow ahead of you with the kettle on. Sef the ferrywoman, who keeps letters from walkers in a tin. Oro, walking the other way, who says nobody writes songs about the middle. And a brown dog who follows at a polite distance until you have walked three days in a row, and then decides you are his.

EARNED, NEVER BOUGHT
Twelve pieces of gear, forged by consecutive days on the road: an ash-handled cup at three days, the reed cloak at seven, the Far-Lantern at thirty. Two rest days a week are banked for you automatically, because rest is part of walking, and nothing forged is ever taken back. Twelve keepsakes are given to you by the people you meet, and not one of them is worth money.

HONEST ARITHMETIC, ON ONE SCREEN
1,300 steps to a kilometre, a flat rate that nothing can raise. A single day converts at most 40 kilometres, so a walking marathon counts in full and a phone that spent the afternoon in a car mostly does not. The step ledger shows every day the app has read, what it read and what it did with it. If a number looks wrong, that is the number the app used.

NO LOCATION, NO NETWORK, NO ACCOUNT
Rucksack never uses GPS and never asks where you are. The weather at your camp belongs to Elsewhere, worked out from the date and the region you are standing in, which is exactly why the app needs no forecast service. It does not request the internet permission at all, so it could not upload your walking if it tried. There is no sign-up, no advertising, no analytics and no notification of any kind. Export the whole journal as plain text or the whole record as JSON whenever you like.

FREE AND FINISHED
All eleven regions, all forty one encounters, all twelve pieces of gear and the ending are in the app. There is no second half to buy, no subscription and no way to pay for distance. Selling kilometres would empty the only thing this app is about.

Most walkers take a year. The road does not mind.

You will also meet a dog. He can be yours forever. It takes three days of walking.

Recent changes:
Every camp picture was drawing its landscape in the wrong colour. Fixed, so all eleven regions look
like themselves: reed water, salt flats, drowned bell towers, lanterns over the fen.

New: the whole road as a contour ribbon on the camp screen, so you can see where you stand on all
3,500 km at once. A new icon and drawn pictures throughout. The map's fog stays inside the coast,
and "All" fits the continent. A phone whose clock moves no longer breaks the day count.