What’s Available Now / What We’re Still Building
We want you to know exactly what you’re getting when you install this app — and what isn’t there yet. We’d rather you find out now than discover a missing feature after you’ve already installed.
What you can use right now
Core: time management
- ✅ :stages-count:-stage progressive reminders (Gentle Reminder / Friendly Reminder / Serious Warning / Time’s Up / Overtime)
- ✅ When time’s up, a system-level gentle block in front of the target app + parent PIN unlock
- ✅ Automatic daily reset at midnight
- ✅ Progressive PIN lockout (prevents children from guessing repeatedly)
- ✅ Parent alert notifications (when the child exceeds time limits or makes repeated wrong PIN attempts)
If a parent wants to adjust today’s limit, the only path is: open Tortoise Time → Settings → enter the parent PIN. There’s no “temporary unlock” shortcut.
The main feature: Turtle Island exploration
- ✅ Dispatch your turtle to 3 destinations (nearby shallows / far deep ocean / weekend Mystery Waters)
- ✅ Turtle brings back one of many hand-drawn ocean collectibles (true probabilities, no cheat mechanisms)
- ✅ Auto-generated travel journal entries
- ✅ A collection-driven index — gather the year’s collectibles to unlock a new chapter of the story
Keep-alive mechanisms
- ✅ Multi-layer monitoring (foreground service / system heartbeat / periodic background task)
- ✅ Automatically resumes guarding after the system kills it
- ✅ Usage recovery (backfills usage data from any gap while the app was offline)
Device compatibility
- ✅ Adapted for 8 major brands (Xiaomi / Huawei / OPPO / vivo / OnePlus / Meizu / Samsung / Honor)
- ✅ Supports :min-android-version: and above
What we’re currently building
In priority order:
- More user-facing documentation — the articles you’re reading now are the first batch; more will follow
- Story content for later years — the seven-year saga is already in the app, unfolding year by year as you collect; we’re still polishing the scenes and text of the later years (see the next piece)
- Broader device compatibility — a small number of ROMs still need polish
What we’re not building (for now)
- Account login / cloud sync — not in the near term. Our privacy commitment is “fully local.” Adding a cloud breaks that.
- Cross-device data transfer — same reason. For now, a new installation means starting fresh.
- Multi-child support — one phone manages one child’s settings. Families with multiple children will need to take turns.
- iOS version — no plans. iOS system restrictions make our progressive reminder approach nearly impossible to implement there.
- Combat / PvP / leaderboards — never. These contradict the Gentle Guidance principle.
For parents who are still deciding
If what’s in the “available now” list is what you need, installing now will serve you well. If something you care about is in “currently building,” it will come — but don’t install just for that yet. If it’s in “not building,” please seriously consider whether this is the right app for you — we don’t plan to change those decisions any time soon.
We can’t make the decision for you — but we want you to know exactly what you’re installing.
Want to know what the next 7 years hold → Seven Years of Story Report an issue or suggestion → Tortoise Time → Settings → Feedback