TrailQuest 1.2.9 — The Price of the Trail

There’s a question that every game designer eventually has to answer.

What happens when someone who has earned something — built it step by step over weeks — decides to throw it away?

Version 1.2.9 is, more than anything else, our answer to that question.

Why streaks needed a decision

Until now, changing your daily step goal in TrailQuest was a neutral act. You moved the slider. The new goal took effect. Nothing else changed.

That was, on reflection, wrong.

A streak in TrailQuest is a record of consecutive days you hit your target. It’s a number that represents real effort — sometimes weeks, sometimes months. If that target quietly shifts downward, the streak is no longer an honest record. It’s a number kept alive by a lower bar. The days that built it remain true. But the number itself starts to mean something different.

1.2.9 makes that trade-off explicit.

Two choices, one moment

When you lower your daily goal, TrailQuest now shows you a decision screen.

Option A: Reset for free. Your streak resets to zero. The lower goal takes effect immediately. Nothing is charged, nothing is lost except the streak — which was, by definition, set under different terms.

Option B: Preserve your streak. You pay a fee calculated from how much you’ve built: 3 × your current streak, with a floor of 50 TC and a ceiling of 1,000 TC. The streak continues. The lower goal takes effect.

The price scales with the stakes. A 10-day streak costs 50 TC to preserve. A 100-day streak costs 300 TC. A 400-day streak hits the ceiling at 1,000 TC. The formula is designed to feel proportionate — significant enough that the choice means something, never so punishing that a genuine life change becomes a financial decision.

One thing that doesn’t change: raising your goal preserves your streak for free, for everyone. Setting a harder target is a harder path. That deserves recognition, not a fee.

Paid trails and what they actually cost

1.2.9 also introduces trail unlocking.

Some trails in TrailQuest are free. Others — the ones that required significant work to build, research, and maintain — carry a one-time unlock cost. The cost is simple: 2× the trail’s length in kilometres, paid in Trail Coins.

When you complete the trail, the full unlock cost comes back to you. The coins return. This isn’t a paywall — it’s a deposit. You’re not paying to access the trail. You’re staking something on the commitment to finish it.

What this is actually about

Trail Coins in TrailQuest are earned by walking. Not purchased. Not earned by watching ads or completing offers. Every coin in your wallet came from steps.

That matters for how the unlock system feels. When you pay 252 TC to start the EBC trail, you’re spending the proceeds of roughly 250,000 steps. That’s not a microtransaction. That’s a record of movement that you traded, voluntarily, for the right to start something demanding.

Every gate in TrailQuest should be a walking distance, not a price tag.

We’ve thought carefully about what it means for an app to charge for things — and what it means for those charges to feel earned rather than extracted. The 2× rule is our current answer. It may evolve. But the principle underneath it won’t.