Stillcraft / Apps / Lipovka Post
You are the new postman of Lipovka, a small village by the river Lipka. Every morning letters arrive at the post office, and your real steps carry the bag from house to house. You never read other people's letters: at the gate the resident opens the envelope, tells you the news, brings out a jar of jam and sometimes gives you a reply to carry. Letter by letter, the lives of the village unfold over years. Free, with no ads and no account.
Android 9.0+ · Free · English & Русский
The kettle is on, the cat Surguch is asleep on the letters and the wall clock shows the real time. The bag is sorted for about your usual day's walk, so a light walker and a long walker both get a full round they can finish. What doesn't fit waits on the shelf for a lighter day.
The phone's own step counter counts even with the app closed. On a hand-drawn map the little postman walks the road to the next house, telegrams first. Nothing is lost: steps carry over, and a far letter is simply a longer walk.
The resident reads the letter and tells you the news. Gifts go up to your room above the post office, stamps into the album and replies into tomorrow's bag.
30 residents, 55 story arcs and 669 letters, written to last two to three years and more: a sailor's fiancée and her wedding, a widow looking for her lost sister, a girl who writes to Ded Moroz every December and grows up, a boy who catches Antarctica on the radio, a live queen bee arriving by post.
You get letters too: a mystery each season, a pen-pal postwoman in the Urals and a bundle of letters from 1958 found in the attic.
The weekly newspaper, pensions, magazines, birthday and New Year cards, 267 everyday letters and 35 yearly village events, from the autumn fair to the ice breaking on the river, keep the bag full year after year.
At 50 km the bridge is repaired and Zarechye opens across the river. Then come the railway halt, the lake hamlet Ozyorki, a weather station deep in the forest and the district town. An average walker covers about 1,600 km a year, so the last one opens in the second year. After the first week a stray dog, Bublik, starts walking with you.
Pick your town if you like, and Lipovka gets your weather: rain on the window, snow on the roofs, fog over the river, the real sunrise and sunset and the moon in its real phase. Without a town the village keeps its own weather for the season.
The kerosene lamp, tea with jam, the day's news and one line in the postman's diary. Then you put out the lamp.
| District | Walked in total | What's there |
|---|---|---|
| Lipovka | From the first day | The post office, the shop, the club, the mill and the houses along the road |
| Zarechye | 50 km | The bridge is repaired: a farmstead, the forester's lodge, a woodcarver's workshop |
| Halt 118 km | 150 km | A tiny railway halt with a telegraph and the local train |
| Ozyorki | 350 km | A fishing hamlet on a big lake |
| Pine Cordon | 700 km | A weather station deep in the forest |
| Gorodok | 1,200 km | The district town: the newspaper office and the museum |
On Xiaomi (MIUI / HyperOS), Huawei and some other phones, allow Autostart for Lipovka Post and remove battery limits so steps are read in the background and the morning post arrives on time. The step counter itself never misses a step; the app reads it whenever it can.
JDK 17+ (Android Studio's bundled JBR works) and the Android SDK. Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Room, DataStore, WorkManager; every picture is pixel art drawn in code. The letters are TSV in app/src/main/assets/content.
git clone https://github.com/bigdevwhale/lipovka.git cd lipovka ./gradlew testDebugUnitTest assembleDebug # app.lipovka.dev, installs next to a release ./gradlew assembleDebug -Pdemo # app.lipovka.demo: four months into the job ./gradlew testDebugUnitTest -Prender --tests '*RenderArt*' && python tools/shots.py # screenshots python tools/check_content.py # checks every letter, item and stamp
Yes. The phone's own step counter counts all day, whether the app is open or not. Lipovka reads it when you open the app and from time to time in the background.
The bag is sized to your own days, so a short walk still finishes a round. Nothing is lost: steps carry over, and letters that don't fit wait on the shelf for another day.
Only for the weather, and only if you choose a town. Then the town's coordinates go to Open-Meteo, or to MET Norway when Open-Meteo can't be reached, and nothing else leaves the phone. Without a town the village has its own weather.
Years. The stories are written for two to three years and more, and after that the newspaper, cards, everyday letters and yearly village events keep coming. A test plays three years of rounds to check the post comes every day.
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