trond.studio

Waddle for iPhone, in TestFlight beta

Walk. Bake. Feed the duck.

A cozy bakery game that runs on your real steps. Walking earns ingredients, baking asks you to put the phone down, and Doug runs the shop while you are away. No account, no tracking, and nothing ever leaves your phone.

Waddle's Waddle tab: Doug inside a progress ring showing steps toward the day's goal. Waddle's Bake tab: Doug whisking behind a counter, above a pantry of ingredients.

What it does

Your steps are the currency

Waddle reads your step count from Apple Health and turns it into grocery bags. Walk further, open more bags, get better ingredients. There is no way to buy your way past the walking — that is the whole point of the game.

Baking asks for your attention, then lets go

Starting a bake starts a timer you are meant to walk away from. A Live Activity keeps the countdown on your Lock Screen so you do not have to check. Come back to a finished pastry and a duck who is pleased with you.

A hundred and fifty recipes

From a sugar cookie to a gateau St Honoré, in tiers that unlock as your oven and mixer improve. Each one is hand-painted, and the collection meter tracks the ones you have not made yet.

Prep minigames worth playing

Crack, whisk, fold, roll, sift, pour, knead, frost and sprinkle. Short, physical, and scored — a careful hand earns a better bake, a careless one still gets you something out of the oven.

A shop that moves

Prices swing on a daily market, morning and afternoon rushes favour different tiers, and Sunday pays a premium. Sell at the right hour and the same cake is worth noticeably more.

A bakery you decorate

Wallpaper, flooring, shelves, plants, counters and awnings, stocked fresh each day. The kitchen and the shopfront are yours to arrange, and Doug lives in them.

A look at it

Private by design

The app cannot send your data anywhere, because it has no networking code at all.

Waddle asks Apple Health for one thing — your step count — and it asks read-only, so it can never write to your health record. That number is used on your phone to work out how many bags you have earned, and it stops there. There is no account, no login, no server, no analytics and no advertising, and the app has no third-party dependencies of any kind. Your bakery is stored locally on your device. The full detail is in the privacy policy.

Built because a step counter is a boring reason to walk.

A number going up has never once got me out of the door. Owing a duck a bag of flour turns out to work rather better. Waddle is the smallest honest version of that idea: the walk is the only way to get anything, and the reward is somewhere warm to come back to.

How your data is handled