Stillcraft / Apps / Rustle

A pet inside the phone

A home inside the phone. Put it down, and Rustle goes exploring.

Rustle is a little creature that lives inside your phone. The battery is its stove, the camera a round window onto the street, and under the boards there are nooks to explore. Turn the phone face down and Rustle goes out: to the charging port, down to the battery cellar, over the ribbon-cable bridge. The longer the phone lies there, the further it goes and the more it brings back: buttons, screws, LEDs, feathers, beads, raisins. In the workshop the finds become tools that open new places, furniture for the nook and clothes to try on. At night it sleeps by the stove while the phone charges, and if the screen stayed dark till morning, it brings something back from its dreams. Eight kinds of creature, fur in any colour, even one taken from a photo, weekly requests, 67 achievements and a home-screen widget.

Download APK View on GitHub

Android 9.0+ · Free · English & Русский

What's inside

Everything Rustle does.

The battery is the stove

While the phone charges, a fire burns and the kettle steams. When the charge runs out, the stove goes cold and Rustle wraps up in a blanket.

It feels the phone

In the dark it lights a candle, in the sun it squints. Shake the phone and it gets dizzy; let it overheat and it fans itself. When storage fills up, dust gathers in the corner.

The real sky in the window

Sunsets follow the sun where you are. Turn weather on, and rain, snow, fog and storms come over the roofs across the street.

Outings face down

Five places open one by one. A quick look at the phone is fine; scroll for long and Rustle turns back halfway. The outing shows in a notification.

Nights by the stove

Put the phone on charge and tuck Rustle in. If the screen stays dark till morning, the night went well, and it brings back a find from a dream.

Workshop and kitchen

62 finds become tools, furniture for the nook and 21 clothes you can try on. In the kitchen the pantry turns into tea, porridge, a raisin pie and honey cake.

Yours alone

Eight kinds, eight colours or one taken from any photo, and patterns. Character grows from life: a tuft after ten hours of outings, rosy cheeks after seven good nights.

Reasons to come back

Mood and hunger change the haul. Three new requests every Monday, 67 achievements, a run of days, a morning present, a tilt maze and a widget.

Screens

Captured in Rustle.

Rustle: The nook — The nookThe stove is lit.

Rustle: Evening — EveningSnow over the roofs.

Rustle: Outings — OutingsFive places to go.

Rustle: Finds — FindsEverything it brought.

Rustle: Workshop — WorkshopTools, furniture, clothes.

ProfileKind, fur and character.

Rustle: Achievements — Achievements67 in all.

Rustle: Mood and hunger — Mood and hungerWhat they change.

The places

Place	Opened by	What it's like
The Port	open from the start	by the charging port, where the draught comes in
Battery Cellar	a lantern	under the battery: warm, dark, smells of raisins
Ribbon Bridge	a rope	a flat cable over the gap between the boards
Speaker Gorge	earmuffs	loud: every ring echoes for an hour
The Observatory	a ladder	under the camera glass, where the sky shows through

Get it

Get Rustle.

Install

Version: v1.0.0 · the first version
File: Rustle.apk, 3.4 MB
Requires: Android 9 (API 28) or newer.
Permissions: Notifications for outings, optional. Internet and approximate location only for the weather in the window, if you turn it on. No account, no ads, no analytics.
License: MIT · font m6x11 by Daniel Linssen

Download the APK on the phone.
Open it and allow installs from this source when Android asks.
Name your creature, pick its kind and fur, then turn the phone face down for the first outing.

Everything stays on the phone. The internet is used only for the weather, and only if you turn it on.

Download APK All releases

Build from source

JDK 17+ (Android Studio's bundled JBR works) and the Android SDK. Kotlin, Jetpack Compose; all the pixel art, the nook, the creatures, the finds and the icons, is drawn in code.

git clone https://github.com/bigdevwhale/rustle.git
cd rustle
./gradlew testDebugUnitTest assembleDebug
./gradlew assembleDebug -Pdemo              # app.rustle.demo: a nook lived in for three weeks

Good to know

Questions people ask.

Does it drain the battery?

No. During an outing the app only notes when the screen goes on and off. The light sensor and the accelerometer work only while the app is open.

What if I need the phone during an outing?

Use it. A quick look is fine; only long screen time sends Rustle home early, with whatever it has found so far.

It's the first version — what if something breaks?

Then please tell us: Settings has buttons to report a bug or suggest an idea through the StillCraft bot.

More from Stillcraft

Other tools on the shelf.

Anyway

Anyway

How many Saturdays you have left, and what you'll do with them.

Early release APK ready

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

SwissZen

SwissZen

The mindfulness multi-tool: breathing, Wim Hof, a bell, practices and a journal.

Stable On Google Play

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Explore SwissZen

FocusShield

FocusShield

A strict focus timer that actually blocks distractions.

Stable Installer ready

Windows 10 / 11 EN · RU

Explore FocusShield

Ties

Ties

Don't drift apart from the people who matter.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Unhook

Unhook

Quit a habit, one day at a time.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Dayquest

Dayquest

Turn your days into a quest.

New On Google Play

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Explore Dayquest

Serene

Serene

A quiet place for your mind.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Ember

Ember

Intermittent fasting, made warm and simple.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Fogwalk

Fogwalk

Your city, hidden in mist. Walk to reveal it.

New On Google Play

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Explore Fogwalk

DearMe

DearMe

Letters to your future self. Sealed until the day comes.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Glow

Glow

Every win deserves a little praise.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Waypoint

Waypoint

Goals under a night sky: 17 methods in one app.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Explore Waypoint

Obol

Obol

Earn obols with useful apps, pay Charon for the feed.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Prism

Prism

One light, many colours: choose who you are in every part of life.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Temper

Temper

Cold water, contrast showers and the sauna, tempered like steel.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Hearthspell

Hearthspell

Chores as spells in a wizard's tower: keep the floors bright, wake the helpers.

New On Google Play

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Explore Hearthspell

Familiar

Familiar

A pixel-art familiar that feeds on the pages you read.

New On Google Play

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Explore Familiar

Hoard

Hoard

Photos and clips struck into pixel-art treasure in a dragon's cave.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Silverbox

Silverbox

A film camera for the family: shoot now, see the prints tomorrow.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Explore Silverbox

Notch

Notch

They grow up faster than the photos do.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Calavera

Calavera

A merry app about death and growing old, in the spirit of the Day of the Dead.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Explore Calavera

Vigil

Vigil

Vows sealed with wax, and a ladder that makes them hard to break.

New On Google Play

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Scriptor

Scriptor

A scriptorium for what you learn: your own words, fading ink, and memory that holds.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Explore Scriptor

Marbles

Marbles

About 940 Saturdays until they're eighteen. Spend them together.

Android 9+ EN · RU

Explore Marbles

Stele

Stele

A museum for what you want to remember: dig it up, clean it, put it on show.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Podium

Podium

Race your own ghost at everyday tasks: splits, medals and the Games.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Keeper

Keeper

Intrusive thoughts as ships: the lighthouse beam, the evening watch, forecasts checked.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Lantern

Lantern

A magic lantern deals the glass; parent and child make up the bedtime tale.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Lantern

Night Train

Night Train

A date night for two on a night train: a conductor's questions, the phone as the table between you.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Night Train

Tessera

Tessera

The same questions to your child, yourself or a grandparent, year after year, laid as a mosaic.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Tessera

Kite

Kite

Your mind is a kite on a string. A few soft tugs a day bring it back to here.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Side A

Side A

There is too much music. One album a week, a whole side at a time, on a turntable or a tape deck.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Rewind

Rewind

There's too much to watch. So nothing gets watched. Your watchlist as a nineties video rental store.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Party of Two

Party of Two

Every date is a quest. The two of you are a party of heroes, and the phone is your game master.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Party of Two

Spintop

Spintop

A cosy lucid-dreaming trainer. In a dream, the top never falls.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Spintop

Hushwood

Hushwood

A cosy pixel-art meditation tracker. Sit still, and shy animals come out.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Hushwood

Longwave

Longwave

A valve radio for falling asleep: tune into made-up stations of rain, sea and night trains, and let it drift off the air.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Longwave

Sill

Sill

Five pots for everything you've never tried: sow a seed from a catalogue of new things, water it each time you go back, and when it blooms it's yours.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Fridge

Fridge

A fridge door for two: the shopping list, whose turn, notes, worries face down and envelopes that open only together. The phones sync at home, with no server.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Lipovka Post

Lipovka Post

A pedometer where your steps carry the village post. You are the new postman of a small village by a river, and its letters, stories and seasons go on for years.

New On Google Play

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Lipovka Post

Heartwood

Heartwood

Befriend a real tree. Every meeting is a ring: the friendship grows only from visits to the tree itself, and over a year they build up into a sawn cross-section.

New On Google Play

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Heartwood

Cellar

Cellar

Let your wishes age before you buy them. Every urge to buy goes into a bottle on the rack; when it's ripe, you open it without guilt or pour it into the barrel of your real dream.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Stringer

Stringer

Every walk is an assignment from the district paper. The editor wires one ordinary thing to shoot, with a twist; you bring back a frame, it's printed as a halftone, and on Sunday the week comes out as an issue.

New On Google Play

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Stringer

Carriage

Carriage

A diary, index cards, telegrams and letters typed on a typewriter. There's no backspace that erases: a mistake is struck out or painted over and stays on the sheet, so you write slower, and more honestly.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Carriage

Errand

Errand

Every shopping trip is a run. You keep a courier office of one: the household orders on the waybill, each shop learns its own shelf order, and every delivered waybill pays in brass tokens for a sign, a bicycle, a van one day.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Tsukumo

Tsukumo

The things of your hobbies come alive with practice. Every session lights a candle in a little pixel-art Japanese house; a guitar, a ball of yarn or a sourdough starter shivers, opens an eye, steps off the shelf as a house spirit and keeps growing for years.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Tsukumo

Windup

Windup

A little movement all day long instead of an hour twice a week. Nine pixel-art tin toys on a shelf, each a family of movements; a minute or three of squats, balance or breathing winds one up for two hours and puts a pin in the day's music-box drum.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Archipelago

Archipelago

Make friends the way it actually works, and keep them for years. An old sea chart of your people: small sorties of courage to meet them, bridges that grow with every hour together, and fog that rolls in when you stop.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Archipelago

Big Top

Big Top

Step out of your comfort zone a little every day. Your fears become circus acts: pick what you find hard, and the bill offers three small real-life numbers a day, from warm-up to premiere — with a drum roll before and applause after.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Big Top

Biohacker

Biohacker

Over a thousand evidence-graded protocols for a longer, calmer, happier life. Your body is a blueprint with eight systems; every protocol is a mod you try on yourself for 14 days, and the lab shows whether it moved anything before it enters your firmware.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Biohacker

Lodger

Lodger

Someone already lives in your flat. Find out who — and help them leave. A slow, quiet haunting on your own photos: marks in your rooms, notes in the evening, words through the static, and after two weeks one real thing left to do.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Capsule

Capsule

A small present every day, from your past self. You can't surprise yourself unless you forget: fill a capsule machine with little presents for future days, let the words seal, and turn the crank for one a day.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Capsule

Paper Trail

Paper Trail

A budget kept like a detective's case file. Spending is evidence, categories are suspects with police photos, and when the clues show a pattern, a case opens: you name the motive and hand down the verdict.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Paper Trail

Pilgrim

Pilgrim

A pilgrim's pass: come to a place of power, a church, a mosque, a synagogue, a spring or an old tree, sit there ten minutes without the phone, and the book gets a stamp nobody else has.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Pilgrim

Horae

Horae

A book of hours for your own practices: the day divided into hours by the sun, a bell for each, and whatever you put into them written into an illuminated manuscript.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Lot

Lot

Be drawn one of the 117 billion people who have ever lived, and read their life in a parish register: the doors that were open, the ones that were shut, and what was left behind.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Small Honours

Small Honours

Enamel pin badges for the small deeds of a day, each with an order typed out, a rubber stamp and a fanfare. Nothing to plan and no streaks: in the evening the commission asks what happened.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Small Honours

Counterweight

Counterweight

Put a worry on an old brass balance as a stone, and weights with arguments go on the other pan, one by one, until it tips. 1,209 concrete worries, 15,900 weights.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Counterweight

Underbed

Underbed

A pet that lives under your bed and eats fear. Horror films and books feed it, anxious news is fast food, and your own fears it guards at night.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Underbed

Unwritten

Unwritten

A bookshop of books that don't exist. Every day a customer asks for one, and you find it on the shelf by writing its title, first line and blurb.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Unwritten

Silver Lining

Silver Lining

Tarot with no bad cards. The Auntie finds the good even in Death, gives you an omen for the day and asks in the evening whether it came true.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Silver Lining

Rootlings

Rootlings

A pocket field guide to the spirits of your real houseplants. Catch them with the camera; they live by the real sun over your town, ask you to touch the soil, grow, hatch from cuttings and fight real pests.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Rootlings

Dyer

Dyer

Eat thirty different plants in a week and repaint a fairy-tale kingdom the Gloom drained of colour. No calories, no bans.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Inside Job

Inside Job

Your limiting beliefs are a bank that keeps what you forbade yourself. Put a crew together, take the guard down and walk out with it.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Inside Job

Mimic

Mimic

Video games, board games and tabletop RPGs on one pixel shelf, with a mimic that eats what you finish.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Reelkin

Reelkin

Films and series raise a small pet in a projectionist's booth, and every film seats a spectator in your hall.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Reelkin

Aloft

Aloft

A training log where five elemental spirits keep your floating island in the sky.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Farwalker

Farwalker

A pedometer that walks you round the real world: every border a stamp, every km a coin for a train or a ship.

New On Google Play

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Farwalker

Soft Landing

Soft Landing

A calorie counter where every day is a balloon flight: land in your norm and you reach the next village and its recipe.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Soft Landing

Curator

Curator

Sort your phone's gallery like a museum storeroom: a crate a month, one gesture per photo, and the space you free builds the museum.

Android 11+ EN · RU

Explore Curator

Matryoshka

Matryoshka

A present opened layer by layer: the gift sits in the smallest figure, and every figure around it has its own lock.

Android 11+ EN · RU

Explore Matryoshka

Charms

Charms

A child photographs the deeds they've done, the pictures turn into golden engravings, and a week of them brews a real reward.

Android 8.0+ EN · RU

Ranger

Ranger

A running journal where every run is a patrol on the edge of the kingdom, and weather, moon, terrain and pulse decide who you meet.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Apothecary

Apothecary

Your fridge, cupboard, freezer and medicine box as a small potion shop: every product is a bottle that dims as its date nears, and every meal is a potion.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Apothecary

Fieldscan (Beta)

Fieldscan (Beta)

An anomaly scanner for your own city: creatures live in real places, and each comes out only to someone who solves its riddle and does its rite.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Fieldscan (Beta)

Poste Restante

Poste Restante

Be the postman of your own neighbourhood: real house numbers, made-up residents, mail handed over only at the door, and letters you carry between houses.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Poste Restante

The House Opposite

The House Opposite

An advent calendar across the yard: a window lights each evening after the real sunset, once you've done the day's small deed, and someone in the house is leaving presents.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore The House Opposite

Your Move

Your Move

Chess by post: seven correspondents send a move and a little of their life, and your reply goes back with the post.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Your Move

Cabinet of Curiosities

Cabinet of Curiosities

A museum for an odd collection: halls, cabinets, a card for every thing, and a photo check at the flea market: do I already have it?

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Cabinet of Curiosities

Overwinter

Overwinter

A wellbeing diary kept like a polar station: energy is the wind, mood is the cloud, pain is the rain.

Android 11+ EN · RU

Explore Overwinter

Gossamer

Gossamer

Catch passing thoughts in two seconds and see which ones you keep coming back to.

Android 9+ EN · RU

Explore Gossamer

Green Street (Beta)

Green Street (Beta)

A cozy farming game on the real map of your district: beds by the roads you walk and neighbours with stories.

Android 9+ EN · RU

Explore Green Street (Beta)

Under the Mat

Under the Mat

A week in someone's flat abroad: notes in every corner on what to cook, watch, hear and read.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Under the Mat

Nooklings

Nooklings

Catch the cosy moments of your day into glowing jars; six little lodgers of a pixel room eat them.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Nooklings

Campfire

Campfire

A talk by the fire with the people close to you: hold your stones together, and sparks bring the questions.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore Campfire

The Usual

The Usual

A diary of the cafés you keep coming back to: each gets a page and a sugar packet, and every cup leaves a coffee stain on the page.

Android 9.0+ EN · RU

Explore The Usual

Help shape Rustle.

Found a bug, missing a feature, or want it in your language? Tell us on GitHub.