Inspiration
When I was living in Singapore I was hitting 10k steps a day without even trying, but when I moved back to the Philippines that changed, because walking outside here doesn't always feel safe and a lot of streets don't even have a real sidewalk.
A year later I had gained 15kg, and I knew walking had to be a big part of getting that weight off, so I needed something that would make walking fun for me, even indoors.
That's when I remembered playing Pokémon a lot as a kid. There was a feature where you could carry an egg with you, and when you walked around inside the game it would eventually hatch.
I started wondering what it would be like if the steps were real, so I decided to create an app based on that idea.
But I had to somehow make it different from Pokémon, so I thought I should change the look and vibe to match one of my favorite anime, Frieren.
I love how that show treats a long walk as the whole adventure. Nobody is in a hurry. You travel, you notice things, and the journey matters more than where it ends.
I wanted Steporia to be a place like that, a world you cross one day at a time, with sounds and scenery that ask you to slow down instead of chase a number.
What it does
Every day you have Steporia you get an egg, and as you walk during the day it slowly wakes up, going from dormant to glowing to cracking.
When it's ready you tap it three times and it hatches into a Gozu, which goes onto a holographic card in your Dex. There are 50 of them to collect across five elements, Fire, Earth, Wind, Water and Lightning.
The more you walk, the rarer your Gozu can be. Anything under 2,501 steps is always a Common, then Uncommon opens at 2,501, Rare at 5,001, Epic at 7,501 and Mythic at 10,000, and it's the same ladder for everyone.
But a slow day still gets its egg, because I didn't want anyone to lose their day just because they missed their goal.
Who it's for
It's for people who want to walk more but get bored of step rings after a week, and for people like me who can't always walk outside and need a reason to move indoors. And if you grew up hatching eggs in games, it's probably for you too.
How it makes money
Steporia is free to download.
If you want more, there's Steporia Pro, which you can get weekly, yearly, or as a one-time Lifetime purchase through RevenueCat. Pro gives you two extra eggs every day, backs up your Dex to your own iCloud, and unlocks the Today's Walk widget, but restoring a backup never needs Pro.
What makes it different
It doesn't look like a fitness app. Every screen is a painted storybook scene that moves a little when you tilt your phone, and on Home your steps are still there, but the egg and your Gozies are what stand out.
I also wanted the hatch to be fair, so the rarity is decided on your first tap and saved before the egg even cracks, which means closing the app halfway won't give you a reroll. Gozies you haven't found yet are twice as likely to show up, so your Dex fills up faster than pure luck would.
There's no account and no ads. It reads your steps from Apple Health, never writes anything back, and works offline.
How we built it
It's just me. I built it in Swift with SwiftUI, SwiftData, HealthKit, WidgetKit and CloudKit, and RevenueCat handles all three store products.
The artwork is generated with ChatGPT using my own custom art prompt, and I used Claude and Codex to help me build it.
Challenges we ran into
The hardest part wasn't building the app, it was getting people to find it. For the first three days the App Store boost carried Steporia, but once it was lifted it all went back to me distributing the app manually.
I don't have a lot of followers on social media, and honestly I still lack experience with distribution, so I'm still figuring it out as I go.
Getting through App Store review was slow too, and I had a couple of rejections along the way.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Steporia launched as a paid app on September 16, and within 24 hours it hit #1 in Paid Health & Fitness in the Philippines, Canada, the US, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Singapore, and was at the top of the charts in 8 countries according to Toplify.
After that I shipped six updates in two weeks, from 1.0 to 1.2.0, and everyone who paid for the app early now has Pro for life without typing in a single code.
What we learned
Being solo, I realized how hard distribution is. Even at #1, not many people tried a paid app, because a price, even a small one, stops most people at the store page, so after a week I decided to make Steporia free, with Pro as a subscription or a one-time Lifetime purchase on top.
I also wanted to experiment with something that could help with distribution, so I created a Steporia Community on Facebook and linked it from inside the app. My hope is that it grows on its own as people share their hatches there, and since the app is free now, their friends can try it right away when they see a post. It's still early though, and I have yet to see it grow.
What's next for Steporia - Step Tracker Game
First I want to add translations, starting with the countries where Steporia charted, and then more Gozies to find and more ways to share your hatches with the Steporia Community.
Players have also been asking for rankings, so I want to add rankings inside the app where you can see how you're doing against your own circle.
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