StepHavenBuilding a town with friends
Your walk and your friend's walk, in the same little town. Here's how shared towns work in StepHaven.
Most of the time a StepHaven town is yours alone. But some of the best towns are built by several people at once: a couple who walk together, a family spread across the country, a group of friends keeping each other moving. So you can start a shared town and invite people into it.
Inviting someone
In the Havens screen, tap New Shared Haven. StepHaven gives the town a six-character code. Send it to a friend. They tap Join with Code, and you get a request to let them in. Once you say yes, they're building alongside you.
A shared town can hold up to eight people. Joining is always free, and the free game includes one shared town that you start yourself as well as one of your own.
Everyone pays their own way
The town is shared. The walking isn't. Each person's steps, points, inventory and level stay their own. When your friend plants an oak, it was paid for with their walk, and when you put down a bench, it came out of yours. Nobody can spend someone else's steps.
If someone takes away a thing you placed, it goes back to your inventory, not theirs. Things never get lost between friends.
Seeing each other build
Changes travel through iCloud, so there's no StepHaven account to make. What a friend builds shows up on your phone a few seconds later. If you're in the town at the time, a little tag with their name and colour pops up over what they placed. If you're away, you'll get a note next time you open it, like "Sam built 14 things while you were away", and a tap takes you straight to where they were working.
Day and night follow the time zone of whoever started the town, so everyone sees the same sunset over the same rooftops, wherever they live.
Open or guarded
When you start a shared town you choose how changes work:
- Open means anyone in the town can rearrange or take away anything. It suits close friends and families.
- Guarded means only the person who placed something can remove it. Everyone can still add to the town.
You can change this later from the town's settings.
Leaving, and making room
Anyone can leave a shared town whenever they like. What they built stays for everyone else to enjoy. The person who started the town can also remove someone, or block them so they can't ask to join again. Someone who's removed keeps their own copy of the town as it was, to carry on building on their own.
What's shared, and with whom. Only the town itself, plus the name and colour you choose for your tag, is shared with the other people in it. Your step count is never shared. It stays on your phone.
Getting started
Open StepHaven, tap the gear, start a shared town and send the code to someone you walk with, or someone you wish you walked with more. Then go for a walk and see what they've added by the time you get back.
StepHaven: Cozy Town Builder
Free on iPhone. No ads, and your steps stay on your phone.
Download on theApp Store