Counterweight

A stone on your heart can be weighed

Name what won't let you rest: money, test results, the boss who didn't reply, a parent getting old. It goes on the left pan of an old brass balance as a stone. On the right pan the chamber lays weights one by one, each with one argument on it. A weight can be a checked fact, the worst case walked through step by step, one small thing in your hands today, a question, a voice from the Stoics, or a feather. The weights keep coming until the beam tips. 1,209 concrete worries in 24 spheres and 15,900 weights. Free, no ads, no account, no internet.

English · Русский · Changelog

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How it works

1. The stone. Type the worry in your own words or pick it from the shelves. Search knows how people really put it: "they'll lay me off", "the mole changed colour". Then say how heavy it feels, from 1 to 10: a grain of sand, a cobblestone, a whole rock.

2. The weights. They go on the other pan one at a time, and each metal rings its own note:

   • cast iron: facts with a source;
   • brass: "and then what?", the worst case step by step down to solid ground;
   • copper: one small action within your control;
   • silver: the other side;
   • glass: a question to ask yourself;
   • bronze: voices, from Seneca to the psychologists;
   • a feather: a little kind humour.

   Heavy fears that can truly come true get steel: honest weights that don't promise it'll all be fine.

3. The beam tips. You say how heavy the stone is now, and when it will be clear whether it came true.

4. Checking the scales. On that day the chamber asks: so, did it happen? Your own record becomes a sealed weight of its own, for example "You checked 23 worries. 17 didn't happen; of those that did, you got through 6 of 6". Next time it goes on the pan early.

5. Polishing. When the same worry is outweighed again and again, its stone on the shelves gets smoother, until it's a pebble you can throw into the river.

6. The well. "And then what?" all the way down. At the bottom is what holds you up, in your own words.

7. The case.

   • Keep the weights that hit home.
   • Engrave your own; they weigh more than anyone else's.
   • Set aside what isn't for you, and it never comes again.

8. The hour for worries. Put a stone on the shelf until evening and don't carry it all day. One quiet bell rings if anything is waiting.

9. At night. From midnight to five the chamber is dark and has its own soft weights, because at 3 a.m. the mind exaggerates.

10. Safety. Words about self-harm open a help screen with numbers to call, instead of the scale.

The app doesn't replace a doctor or a therapist.

Build

./gradlew testDebugUnitTest assembleDebug
./gradlew -Pdemo assembleDebug          # app.counterweight.demo with two months of weighings
./gradlew testDebugUnitTest -Prender --tests '*RenderArt*'   # the scale, stones, weights, icon and every screen to app/build/art
python tools/shots.py app/build/art     # README screenshots from the renders
python tools/icon.py                    # launcher icon vectors
python tools/check_content.py           # checks the catalogue

• Art. Everything is drawn in code. The balance, the stones and the ten kinds of weight are in ui/art/Scale.kt.
• Sound. Sounds are synthesised on first launch.
• Catalogue. It lives in app/src/main/assets/content/, one TSV per sphere. The format is described in docs/CONTENT.md.

Fonts: Prata, PT Serif and PT Mono, SIL Open Font License.