# Small Worlds, Long Journeys — V1 design

Galax Games · native portrait iPhone · iOS 17 or later · version 1.0 (1)

A field naturalist follows living paths across a ring-lit alien planet. The repeatable decision is: choose an interesting place, prepare one companion and two tools, travel, notice a small life, and bring understanding home.

## The authored world

One connected planet contains Mossfold, Prism Wetlands and Warmstone Heights. Little Lantern Camp connects to twelve named landmarks through seventeen authored paths. Each destination has a distinct original illustration and a short observation. Eighteen original creatures have six exploration abilities, three forgiving befriending behaviours, habitat clues and persistent familiarity.

Map buttons and a destination list preview actual connected routes, time, terrain, arrival reward and missing preparations. Four labelled direction buttons preview adjacent waypoints. A redirect waits for the current path to finish. Rest at next waypoint permits a change of pack. Paths between recorded landmarks remain safely retraceable with any pack. No real-world location, walking, GPS or spoofing is involved.

## Journeys and small lives

Every path contains a habitat signal at 35% and a gathering spot at 72%. Signals build research clues; gathering grants Field Notes. Arrival records landmarks and rewards the completed destination. The selected route automatically repeats forward and back. Active play means choosing a detour, pursuing clues and investigating a recorded encounter, without precision movement or frantic tapping.

Research focus makes the habitat's next signals pursue the chosen creature. Common, uncommon and rare creatures require 1, 3 and 6 base clues. Tools, scanner improvements and companions reduce the effort. Rare species need the generous Luminous tide, a Resonance chime or a Tide song companion. Tides change every four completed journeys, not with real-world time. A fully prepared focused search guarantees a recorded encounter after enough signals. Three comfortable actions befriend a creature; each step persists. All eighteen possible distinct encounter records can wait indefinitely. Explore shows three at a time; the journal holds all of them.

## Becoming capable

Field Notes are the sole spendable currency. Six upgrade tracks affect travel, scanner access, survey rewards, field tools, camp development and companion bonuses. Six tools and six companion abilities make preparation matter. Familiarity strengthens existing companions, so early friends stay useful.

Habitat studies award permanent expedition Mastery without resetting anything. Complete V1's main survey by befriending eighteen creatures, recording twelve landmarks and publishing all three habitat studies. Further exploration deepens familiarity and fills the journey journal.

An optional new field season restarts local development on this same planet while keeping every companion, recorded encounter, journal record, landmark, tool and permanent benefit. This is V1's prestige foundation. A second planet and a new-world campaign are explicitly outside this finished, finite V1; there is no unfinished map button or promise that a purchase unlocks one.

## Presentation and scope

Original illustrated creatures, landscapes, explorer poses, four camp stages and two optional camp decorations share moss green, warm stone, pale ivory and luminous turquoise. Device appearance follows iOS; Dusk is restrained and Night is deeper. SwiftUI supplies readable, scalable controls; SpriteKit animates the explorer and companion on the map. Creature breathing and movement respect Reduce Motion. Haptics are optional.

The original score has a familiar camp theme and three related ambient habitat arrangements. No combat, accounts, servers, premium currency, energy, adverts, deadlines, streaks, random paid rewards or collection paywalls are included. Four optional cosmetic purchases and one offline-hold convenience purchase fund the game without withholding the free survey.

Every first visit to a landmark in each field season is kept as a permanent journey record. Only the routine repeated-journey list is limited to the most recent 120 entries; this never deletes the first-visit history.