About this site
Data, payment, privacy, and why the ending comes first.
01What is this?
A small browser game. It draws one life from real demographic statistics — which country, what age you die, what kills you — then makes you walk backwards year by year to see how that life arrived at that ending.
02Where does the data come from?
UN World Population Prospects 2024, World Bank WDI, and WHO Global Health Observatory. 173 countries and territories, sampled by each country's yearly births.
03How is the age at death calculated?
By sampling that country's life table, split by sex — not random numbers. For a given country and sex, the age you draw follows that country's real mortality distribution. Some places draw very short lives. That is not a bug.
04Can I choose where I'm born?
No. The birthplace is drawn, weighted by real birth counts: India about 17%, China about 6.8%. That is data, not design. But you can pick "use my real details" — enter your own country, sex and age, and see where you end up.
05Does it cost anything?
Playing is completely free. $3.99 only unlocks the album and the film (taking this life home). Without paying you can still walk the whole life, see the ending, and share the card.
06Do you collect my data?
No accounts, no ads, no selling data. Only four things leave your browser: the life you choose to submit, the one line you wrote, a hash of your email if you pay, and a count with no identifier attached. See the privacy page for details.
07Why give the ending first?
Because a real life runs birth to death, and you only ever see the middle — never the end. This site reverses it: the ending is placed in front of you first, then you watch how it arrived. Only then do the years you'd normally skip become visible.
08Is this a prediction?
No. It is one sample drawn from statistics, not a forecast about any particular person. Play again and you get an entirely different life. The line in the footer is literal: a model, not a prophecy.
09What is teacher mode?
A version for classrooms. Turning it on disables the tree hole, the gallery, sharing and payment, and forces suicide and homicide causes to be re-rolled — a 15-year-old dying by suicide in a classroom is something a teacher has no preparation to handle.
10Which address is official?
Only walkback.live. There is no other domain, no app, no mirror. If you see the same interface somewhere else, it is not us.
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