Walkers: a Lix-based mobile adaptation, looking for Android testers

[Walkers]

Hi everyone, I'm Jacob, the developer of Walkers – Pixel Puzzle, a mobile adaptation built on Lix.

First, thank you to Simon Naarmann and the Lix contributors and level authors. Walkers uses the community's work, including 210 levels; I want to be clear that I did not create those levels or the original game. My work is on the mobile adaptation, touch controls, menus and tutorial.

The game uses eight skills, with pinch-to-zoom, dragging, fast-forward and rewind. I would particularly value feedback from people familiar with Lix on how it feels to select walkers and assign skills on a small touch screen.

The iPhone/iPad version is here:
https://apps.apple.com/app/id6815338598

The tutorial and first level pack are free. One purchase unlocks the remaining packs; there are no ads or subscriptions.

I'm also recruiting Android players for a Google Play closed test. Testers should remain opted in for at least 14 consecutive days and play during that period. Feedback on controls, tutorial clarity, progress saving and any level behaviour that seems wrong would be very useful.

If you'd like to join, email lassen90@gmail.com with the Google account you use for Google Play and your device model. Please keep account email addresses out of public replies.

Screenshots and more information:
https://walkers-pixel-puzzle.netlify.app/

Thanks for taking a look, and for the work that made this possible.

[Silken Healer]

Holy shit Simon is going to have a field day when he sees this

Unfortunately I don't have an iPhone

Playtesting for Android would be up my alley if it weren't for my temporary spell of heightended depression + being scared of having obligations. Maybe if I fix my temporary spell of hightended depression I could playtest but no promises. Also I use Aurora Store and don't want to connect a Google account to my phone. But maybe if I wanted to playtest I could figure out making a burner or something.

It might be a bit outside the spirit of Lix to charge for it, what if someone only has a phone and it's there only way of playing Lix, but eh it's fine you need to make your money somehow, Lix is CC0. A one-time purchase of a game for a fair price is lot more in the spirit of Lix then going down the microtransaction-ridden add-ridden route.

Wonder why the age limit is 9+ not 4+. Does Apple set that or you?

Is Walkers going to be available in any other languages as Lix is already translated into a few languages so you can copy it over.

[Walkers]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! Please don't feel any pressure to test or commit to anything — taking care of yourself comes first.

I understand the concern about charging for a Lix-based game. The small one-time unlock supports the work of bringing it to iOS and Android: the port, touch controls, menus, tutorial and ongoing development. There are no ads, no subscriptions and no account to create in Walkers. The tutorial and first level pack are free, and one purchase unlocks the rest. My intention is that any further content I add to Walkers will also be included at no extra charge for people who have bought that unlock.

The adaptation is based on the licenses supplied with Lix, including CC0 for the core game and the separate licenses applicable to particular resources. Full credit for the original game and community levels belongs to Simon and the Lix contributors and level authors.

The 9+ rating comes from the settings and answers in Apple's App Store age-rating questionnaire.

More languages is a great suggestion — thank you! Looking at the existing Lix translations sounds like a sensible starting point.

I also understand wanting to avoid connecting a Google account. I haven't verified whether the closed test works through Aurora Store, so I don't want to promise that it does. Thanks again for the feedback!

[Guigui]

I applied for Android playtest. Never played on anything on any mobile device until now, so I'll guess it can be a try and see if I like it...

[Silken Healer]

The 9+ rating comes from the settings and answers in Apple's App Store age-rating questionnaire.

I would have thought Lix would be 4+ (the lowest age rating). Maybe it's because of the traps, nuke, exploders and batters?

More languages is a great suggestion — thank you! Looking at the existing Lix translations sounds like a sensible starting point.

Yeah I was more so thinking that if Lix has already been translated into a few languages you may as well just copy the work over then adding any languages not already in Lix

[Walkers]

I applied for Android playtest. Never played on anything on any mobile device until now, so I'll guess it can be a try and see if I like it...

Great, have you sent me a mail?
I got one last night so I quess that maybe you?

[Guigui]

I sent email to the given address about 7 hours ago. But now I cant find it in my sent messages, so I just sent another one.

[Simon]

Hi Jacob, thanks for showing this!

Walkers fills a niche. I've had a few bug reports that requested support for phones or tablets #485 #225, and I've never gotten around to any of it.

I hard-wired the mouse controls in a few places. Good job ripping them out.

Single-player Lix relies on two-handed play (second hand on keyboard) to remove the execution difficulty from harder levels. But the keyboard is unavailable on phones. Did you select easier levels in light of this? Or did you take everything that confined itself to the 8 skills?

From your screenshots and videos, the skill-assignment UI looks like it makes lot of sense on the confined screen. I cannot try the UI myself because I don't have these kinds of phones.

It's interesting that you can sell existing levels instead of your main contribution, the UI for phones. It makes sense for your closed system; the user can't separate the levels from the UI and really buys the levels with the UI. I've always told contributors how CC0 means that somebody might eventually come along, take everything and sell it. You're the first in those 15-20 years to sell it, and your UI makes a reasonable case.

You've understood the licensing situation: Music and font aren't CC0, everything else is CC0. Explicit attribution isn't required by CC0 but you're crediting me and the forums nonetheless. Thanks!

I assume the name change (Lix to Walkers) is to show unaffiliation in the most direct way.

Simon

[Walkers]

Hi Jacob, thanks for showing this!

Walkers fills a niche. I've had a few bug reports that requested support for phones or tablets #485 #225, and I've never gotten around to any of it.

I hard-wired the mouse controls in a few places. Good job ripping them out.

Single-player Lix relies on two-handed play (second hand on keyboard) to remove the execution difficulty from harder levels. But the keyboard is unavailable on phones. Did you select easier levels in light of this? Or did you take everything that confined itself to the 8 skills?

From your screenshots and videos, the skill-assignment UI looks like it makes lot of sense on the confined screen. I cannot try the UI myself because I don't have these kinds of phones.

It's interesting that you can sell existing levels instead of your main contribution, the UI for phones. It makes sense for your closed system; the user can't separate the levels from the UI and really buys the levels with the UI. I've always told contributors how CC0 means that somebody might eventually come along, take everything and sell it. You're the first in those 15-20 years to sell it, and your UI makes a reasonable case.

You've understood the licensing situation: Music and font aren't CC0, everything else is CC0. Explicit attribution isn't required by CC0 but you're crediting me and the forums nonetheless. Thanks!

I assume the name change (Lix to Walkers) is to show unaffiliation in the most direct way.

Simon

Hi Simon,
Thanks for taking a look and for the thoughtful reply! And thank you for making Lix and the community's work available—it gave me the foundation for this mobile adaptation.
The level selection is based on compatibility rather than difficulty. I included all single-player levels that passed the supported-mechanics checks, excluding levels with unsupported skills, wrapping, traps, or legacy no-overwrite terrain. That left 210 levels, including eight tutorials. Harder ranks such as Hopeless, Insane, Black Hole, and Nightmare are still represented, so I didn't specifically choose easier levels for phones. Walker assignment is also supported alongside the eight classic skills.
Your point about two-handed play is helpful. Pause and rewind are available, but selecting compatible levels doesn't by itself establish that every harder level is comfortable to play on a touch screen.
On licensing, Walkers uses the CC0 code and assets, without Lix's music or font. The font is Pixelify Sans under the SIL Open Font License, with its license included. Crediting you, the contributors, and the level authors felt like the right thing to do regardless of whether CC0 requires it. My contribution is the mobile adaptation; the original game and levels deserve clear credit.
There wasn't any particular thought behind the name beyond knowing I couldn't call it Lemmings, so I settled on Walkers. Signalling unaffiliation wasn't a deliberate reason for the choice, although I can see why it reads that way. If you have a better name in mind, I'd be happy to consider changing it.
Thanks again!
Jacob

[Proxima]

I appreciate that this may be a lot of work, but could you give us a list of included levels? As the maintainer of the lemforum pack, I'd like to be able to take a look over it and offer suggestions.

In particular, it sounds like you've discarded all levels that offer skills other than the classic eight. But some of the discarded levels are 20-of-everything levels that would (most likely) work just as well with the classic skills only; even some of the puzzle levels may be adaptable. And discarding levels carelessly is likely to leave gaps in the intended progression and difficulty curve.

[Walkers]

I appreciate that this may be a lot of work, but could you give us a list of included levels? As the maintainer of the lemforum pack, I'd like to be able to take a look over it and offer suggestions.

In particular, it sounds like you've discarded all levels that offer skills other than the classic eight. But some of the discarded levels are 20-of-everything levels that would (most likely) work just as well with the classic skills only; even some of the puzzle levels may be adaptable. And discarding levels carelessly is likely to leave gaps in the intended progression and difficulty curve.

Hi Proxima,

Thanks for offering to look through the selection. I've uploaded the lists to the Walkers website:

- [All 210 included levels](https://walkers-pixel-puzzle.netlify.app/included-levels-2026-10-11.txt)
- [The 79 included lemforum levels](https://walkers-pixel-puzzle.netlify.app/lemforum-included-levels-2026-10-11.txt)

They're grouped by their original packs, with titles, filenames, authors, and positions in the original order. The 210 levels include eight tutorials.

You're right about the limitation of the selection process. The importer automatically excludes levels offering unsupported skills; it doesn't check whether those skills are actually needed to solve the level. It also excludes wrapping, traps, and legacy no-overwrite terrain. Walker assignment is supported alongside the classic eight.

The selection was based on those compatibility checks, rather than a review of the intended progression and difficulty curve. The included levels retain their original order, but I can see how the omissions could leave gaps.

I'd welcome your suggestions, especially for levels that could work with the supported skills or be adapted with small changes. Those would be useful candidates to test, both for solvability and for how they fit into the progression.

Thanks for taking the time to help!

Jacob

[Simon]

Hmm, in that case, your next prompt should be: Please run over all the singleplayer levels from the upstream Lix download, look for levels that match the pattern n-each-of-m-different-skills for n > 0, m > 7, remove from those files all skills that Walkers doesn't support, and print me the list of these so-modified levels so I can manually test them.

From that point, you'll have to play some of it yourself, but I'm sure you can do it. :-) We're happy to help with concrete suggestions if you get stuck. Examples:

• Any Way You Want will certainly pass, and it's the iconic opener that would be nice to preserve.
  
• Solar Eclipse will certainly fail even though it's easy with the full Lix skillset.
• Put Your Lix on Ice is solvable with 5 climbers, 5 miners, but it will become harder than Lovely (more timing, no jumpers to help) and should rank higher or stay out.
• Adventure Playground should pass.
• The Hopeless n-of-everything will likely all fail after cutting skills. Labyrinth of Despair may be open-ended, but it's hard, it needs the many skills and it needs the flexibility.

Ah, and a curiosity from looking more into your linked list of levels: Was it really a prune according to skills only, or did you prune for other criteria, too? I'm wondering because Little Miner Puzzle (lemforum/Lovely) made it and Advent Calendar (simon/xmas20218) didn't, and both levels' skillset is exactly 5 miners and nothing else. Ah, traps aren't supported in Walkers, that explains it.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

One thing that occurs to me is that lower-ranked levels, especially Fun-style ones, are more likely to be salvageable with classic skills only, so if we go by a strict criterion of salvaging all levels that can be salvaged, we'll end up with an unbalanced pack with more in the lower than higher ranks. Still, we can see how things look and decide later on cutting more levels (or moving them to an outtakes pack).

To start with, I've attached my thoughts on a first look through the Lovely rank. In summary:

* Of 40 levels, 10 (indicated with parentheses) should remain dropped.
* Two ("Snow Really" and "The Lion, Lix and the Wardrobe") should move to Quirky.
* Two (indicated with question marks) are filler-ish and could either stay or go.

That leaves us with a rank of 26 to 28 levels, and we could easily cut that down to 25 if we decide to aim for a pack of six equal ranks (150 being a nice round number). Alternatively, if it turns out we can't salvage 150 levels in total, we could shift the rank boundary by moving more Lovely levels to Quirky and aim for six ranks of 20 levels each.

[Proxima]

Tweak to L16 Solar Eclipse so it works with only the classic skills. Since removing the jumper and platformer hatches would leave an ugly gap, I've added a floater hatch to use up the space.

In this topic I suggested switching (what was then) L11 Beneath the Lab and Solar Eclipse. Simon rejected moving Solar Eclipse earlier, feeling "it's not trivial to see every assignment". The level has become easier now that you don't have to worry about how to allocate the climber, jumper, builder and platformer, and I think it's fine for this level to be L11 now (which would be its position, with other levels being discarded or moved later).