currently, the way it works is that when you open the app, steps are automatically converted to energy, and you have to decide on the spot if you want to watch an ad to get %20 extra. while I understand in the short term, this may be seen as beneficial, since it nets a few more ad clicks each day, I think it is hurting the game long term due to the inconvenience of this feature. In it’s current state, you can’t even play the game while doing your steps because every 5-10 seconds you’ll get an automatic pop-up to convert your last ~15 steps into energy (annoying). so you can’t play the game while doing the very thing the game is designed to encourage you to do. I have to imagine this feature turns off a lot of potential players and thereby a hindrance to the games growth potential long term. if there was a button you had to manually click to convert steps>energy it would make the game much more user friendly, and while shikudo may get slightly less ad views (since a player could convert all their day’s steps at once and therefore only have to watch one ad) I think it would also increase the games popularity, which would increase ad views/revenue in the long term. what do you guys think about this? do you agree the game is basically unplayable while you’re walking, or do some of you actually play while doing your steps, despite the near constant “convert steps>energy” pop-ups?
I have thought about posting this very suggestion in the past. So, yeah. I agree. 
I even have a workaround so it doesn’t affect me as much as most.
I often play the game on my iPad while walking (at least while walking around inside my house, especially if the weather is bad). Meanwhile, my iPhone is in my pocket counting the steps. When I want to sync up, I’ll then stop walking (
), stop playing on my iPad, start playing on my iPhone to sync, stop playing on my iPhone, start playing on my iPad again, and then finally start walking again.
Doable, but not exactly ideal. 
And on a related topic, I want to walk 10k steps before I sync. I cannot easily tell when I’m done. The health app on my iPhone only updates the steps about every 10 minutes. While I am walking, I use it to see roughly how many steps I’ve walked and how many more I need to walk.
I’d like to be able to know more precisely by using this pedometer game to show me exactly how many steps I have walked in real time. I don’t do that though because as I said previously, I’ll want to stop walking if I use my phone to play.
Bottom line: Like you, I definitely will not play this pedometer game on my phone while walking.
P.S. I walk 20k steps per day. The reason I want to walk 10k steps and then sync is that I pay crystals to get the 60% bonus for the first 10k steps but I do not want to pay crystals for the next 10k steps. I watch ads to get the 20% bonus for those, since the crystal price is SO expensive for steps past 10k (since the price seems the same per step, but the energy received past 10k steps is far less).
i use an app called pedometer++ that subverts this problem. don’t even have to open the app, it shows my steps right on my home screen and updates every 10 seconds or less
I went to download Pedometer++ and it showed that I already had at some point in the past. Don’t know why I deleted it. Maybe a bug? 
Downloaded it again. Added the widget. Walked a bit. Works great! Thanks!!
I now remember why I didn’t keep using Pedometer++.
As seen in the health app, always 20k+ steps per day:
As seen in Pedometer++, not always 20k+ steps per day (some days, not even close):
However, maybe it’s just a bug when syncing to historical data. I’ll keep using it this time and see if it is accurate going forward.
I do love that I can see my steps without even unlocking my iPhone, which is a huge plus plus (++ 
)!
I second this suggestion.
In plenty of scenarios we probably shouldn’t be walking and playing (watch the road!), there’s also still plenty of scenarios where it’s safe to do so and I’m saving time by multi-tasking (since I intend to play the game anyway and intend to walk anyway – why not at the same time!) I have some mad long walking/cycling roads nearby, you just keep walking and before you know it you’re at the other end of town. There’s big yellow warning signs where you’re about to cross with car traffic. But often I don’t want to open the game while actively adding steps, because it’s more convenient to collect the bonus in one go. Especially now that I get too few ads per day, often I’m not able to collect any ad bonuses.
And Rhandar has an interesting point about wanting to collect the Energy + bonus right after 10k steps, I hadn’t thought about it before but I may want to try that too. Anyway it’d be great to be able to choose when we convert, not get automatic popups.
I keep walking 20k+ steps per day. Everything seemed fine until today.
Both Pedometer++ and the iPhone’s health app initially agreed that I walked 20k steps this past Saturday and Sunday. And for the record, I definitely did walk them.
Today, my health app still shows that I walked 20k+ steps each day but Pedometer++ has changed its mind about last weekend. Decided to take back 5k+ steps it initially said I had walked.
No green for me! Downgraded to orange! 
I definitely remember why I stopped using Pedometer++.
I will keep using it to let me know when I’ve hit my goal for the day in real-time (very useful), but I will not look at its pretty historical charts any longer. And when I say pretty, I really mean pretty buggy.