Runic Gateway

Search

Android

Join the closed test

The Android app is heading for Google Play by way of a closed test. This is the list of people who want a place on it.

It has not opened yet, and the two reasons are below rather than behind a “coming soon”. Adding your address now means you are in the first batch rather than hearing about it afterwards.

What it is waiting on

Two things, neither of which is a date. Both are visible from outside, so there is no reason to be vague about them.

  1. Gate one

    The test track

    The developer account exists; the closed test does not yet. Google needs 12 testers opted in continuously for 14 days before the app can be put forward for a production release, which is exactly why the list is being built before the track opens rather than after.

    Play's testing rules as published on 2026-08-24, and they have changed before.

  2. Gate two

    Somewhere to point it

    The app is a client and ships pointed at nothing — its first screen asks for the address of a site running this platform. So a tester needs a deployment, and the public demo is the one being built for that. Until it is running, a place on the test would be a place to install an app with nothing behind it.

    If you already run a Runic Gateway deployment, this gate does not apply to you — say so in Discord.

What a tester needs

  • Being 18 or older

    The beta is for adults. Nothing verifies it and nothing pretends to — ticking the box on the form is the whole of it — but it is the condition the list is collected under, and it is why the form needs no parental consent machinery it could not honestly operate.

  • An Android device on 10 or newer

    API level 29 is the minimum the app is built against. Phones and tablets both; there is no TV or Wear build and none is planned.

  • A Google account, and the willingness to stay opted in

    Play counts testers who are opted in continuously. Leaving the test and rejoining resets that count for everybody, which is the one thing a tester can do that actually costs something.

  • A Runic Gateway deployment to connect to

    The app ships pointed at nothing. Its first screen asks for the address of a site running this platform and validates it before anything else in the app will run — so a tester needs either their own deployment or the public demo, which is the second of the two things this beta is waiting on.

The list

One field and a box to tick. The address has to be the Google account you use on the phone you would test with — Play matches the tester list against the account, not the device.

Stored: the address, the wording above, the date, and a one-way hash of your connection used only to rate-limit this form. Never your IP address itself. Ask to have it deleted and it will be erased. The privacy page says all of this in full, including how to ask.

Not built

What is not in place yet

Every one of these is a decision rather than a backlog item, so each says why. Where the reasoning was written down in the open, it is linked.

  • A public demo you can click through

    Planned and out of scope today: a virtual machine running the whole stack including a game server, with settings locked down and an hourly reset. Until it exists this site does not link to one, and there is no screenshot here of something that is not running somewhere.

    What would change itThe machine being stood up. The site is already built to gain it by way of one line in a configuration file, rather than a rebuild.

  • A listing on Google Play

    The app is not published. A developer account exists; the closed test is the next step, and production access cannot even be requested until a run of testers has been opted in continuously — which is what the beta is for, and why the beta is not a formality.

    What would change itThe closed test running its course, and then a production review.

    The closed beta