Release: Update v1.1 (delivered over the air to WIKA 1.0.1 — no app store download needed)
Written: 30 September 2026
Built across five branches:
feat/shop-subscriptions-leaderboard-3d·feat/post-lesson-rank·feat/pioneer-badge·feat/referral·redesign/update-v1.1
Overview
WIKA PH v1.1.0 is the biggest update since launch. It reshapes how learners practise, how they see their progress, and how they bring friends along. Five Philippine languages, same lessons, but the experience around them is new.
In one sentence: "v1.1 makes every lesson feel like it counts, makes mistakes less scary, and gives learners a reason to come back tomorrow — and to bring a friend."
At a glance
A new Practice hub — quizzes, your personal dictionary and flashcards in one tab.
Flashcards that follow you — your deck is saved to your account, not your phone.
Rank-up celebrations — an animated screen after every lesson shows how far you moved.
Redo mistakes without penalty — the review round at the end of a lesson costs no hearts.
Invite friends, earn hearts — +5 hearts for every friend who keeps learning.
A new leaderboard — its own tab, a 3D podium, and a global All-Time board.
A bigger Shop — Heart Shield, Streak Restore, Single Heart, and a Subscriptions tab.
Pioneer Pro — two weeks of Pro for our earliest supporters.
A calmer, cleaner app — every pop-up and sheet rebuilt to look and move the same way.
Why we built this update
WIKA 1.0 proved that people want to learn Tagalog, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Ilocano, and Asi on their phones. After launch, three patterns in how learners used the app told us what to fix next.
1. Mistakes felt like punishment
At the end of a lesson, WIKA brings back the questions you got wrong. That is good teaching — but in 1.0 each wrong answer in that round still cost a heart. Learners who were struggling the most could run out of hearts while reviewing, and the lesson ended on a failure. The part of the lesson built to help them was the part that stopped them.
v1.1 turns the review into a real practice round: no hearts, no score, no way to fail out. You learn from the mistake instead of paying for it.
2. Progress was invisible
Every lesson earns Rank Points (RP) that move you up WIKA's ranks. In 1.0 you only saw this if you went looking for it. Finishing a lesson showed XP and tokens, and then you were back on the map.
v1.1 shows the climb. After every lesson a rank screen fills your progress bar, and when you cross into a new rank you get a full celebration. The leaderboard became its own tab, and the rank shield on the home screen now takes you straight there.
3. Learning alone is harder
Language is social. Learners who study with someone they know come back more often, and word of mouth is how most people find WIKA. But 1.0 had no way to invite anyone.
v1.1 adds referrals that reward the right thing: not just signing up, but a friend
actually learning two days in a row.
And a few things we owed you
Flashcards were stored only on the phone — reinstall the app and your deck was gone.
The dictionary and flashcards were buried; practice tools were spread across screens.
Pop-ups and sheets looked and behaved differently from screen to screen, and on iOS one could occasionally freeze the screen.
Our earliest testers had no way to be recognised.
What's new — the complete list
1. Practice hub
The third tab in the bottom bar (the book icon) is now the Practice hub, with three sections you switch between at the top:
Practice — the Hamon quiz rounds, unchanged in how they play.
Dictionary — every word you've earned from completed lessons, moved here from its own tab. Words in Ilocano, Cebuano, Hiligaynon and Asi now play in their own language (previously some played silently or with a Tagalog recording).
Flashcards — your own deck, redesigned (see below).
If the dictionary can't load, it now says so and offers a retry instead of pretending you have no words yet.
2. Flashcards, saved to your account
- Your flashcard deck now lives in your WIKA account. Change phones, reinstall, log in on a tablet — your cards come with you.
- Writing a card is faster: WIKA suggests words you've already learned as you type.
- Cards you made before v1.1 are moved to your account automatically the first time you open Flashcards.
- Deleting your account deletes your deck with it.
3. Redo mistakes without penalty
Questions you missed still come back at the end of the lesson — now as a Practice round.
A wrong answer in practice costs no heart and no score. Your accuracy, XP, tokens and Rank Points all come from the main part of the lesson only.
You can't fail out during practice. (Running out of hearts in the main lesson still ends it, as before.)
It's clearly labelled: a PRACTICE badge, the mascot saying "No hearts, no score — just practice", and a strip under the progress bar.
4. After the lesson: a new reward sequence
Finishing a lesson now plays out in order:
1. Congratulations — XP, tokens and accuracy.
2. Rank — how far this lesson moved you (only when the server has confirmed your points, never a guess).
3. Streak — when this lesson kept your streak alive for the day.
4. Recap — what you learned.
Every screen has one CONTINUE button that works immediately.
Bonus fix: the "Streak Freeze covered your missed day" chip now actually appears. The
server always sent it; the app used to drop it.
5. Rank-up celebrations
Moving up within your rank: your rank shield pops in, "+N RP" counts up, WIKA tells you how many points you need for the next rank, and the bar fills with a shine.
Crossing into a new rank: the screen darkens in your old rank's colour, light rays turn, your shield charges and flashes white, and your new rank bursts in with confetti in the new rank's colours and a RANK UP! banner.
Five new sound effects play only on the rank-up moment.
If your phone has Reduce Motion turned on, you see the final result without the animation.
Tap the rank shield on the home screen to jump to the leaderboard.
6. Invite friends, earn hearts
Everyone gets a personal 6-character invite code — easy to read aloud, no confusing 0/O or 1/I/L. It never changes.
Share it from Profile → Invite Friends or Settings → Friends. Friends can enter it during sign-up (*"Got an invite code?"*) or later from the same sheet.
When your friend finishes lessons on two days in a row, you earn +5 hearts. Claim them from a card on your Profile, one friend at a time.
Up to 10 rewarded friends per month.
Fair-play rules: you can't use your own code, enter a second code, or trade codes back and forth with the same friend.
7. Hearts work differently
Hearts got a rethink to go with referrals and the new Shop:
You still have 5 hearts.
Hearts now refill once you run out. When you hit 0, they come back one per hour until you're at 5 again. (Before, a heart started refilling the moment you lost one.)
Bonus hearts from friends can take you above 5. They're spent first and never run out on their own.
The hearts panel now tells you exactly where you are: full, refilling, or "N left — refilling starts when you run out".
Your Profile shows a countdown to full hearts, and WIKA can send a "your hearts are full" notification.
Plans with unlimited hearts, and Pioneer Pro, still skip all of this.
8. The new Shop
The Shop now has two tabs: Shop and Subscriptions (all WIKA Plans live there, and every "See WIKA Plans" button in the app opens it).
Single Heart | 250 Gold | +1 heart. Up to 3 a day. |
Heart Shield (new) | 500 Gold | Your next 3 mistakes cost no hearts. |
Restore (new) | 2,500 Gold | Brings back a streak you lost in the last 7 days. |
Streak Freeze | 2,000 Gold | Protects your streak for a missed day. |
2× XP Boost | 1,500 Gold | Double XP for 15 minutes. |
More Hearts | — | Opens WIKA Plans for unlimited hearts. |
Restore is smart: if one missed day would already be covered by a Streak Freeze you own, WIKA won't sell you a Restore you don't need.
Heart items are closed, with a short reason, for anyone who already has unlimited hearts — no paying for nothing.
Every item has its own artwork, and its price is shown in the item's colour.
9. The new Leaderboard
The leaderboard is now its own tab (the trophy, slot 5).
The top 3 stand on a 3D podium; everyone else is a clean card list.
All-Time is now global — every WIKA learner, ranked by lifetime Rank Points, top 50, each with their own rank badge. This Week and This Month still compare you with learners in your own league.
Tap any player to see their profile card: rank shield, level, language flag, streak, and lessons completed.
Report and Block are one tap away on every player card.
10. Pioneer Pro — thank you, early supporters
A small, hand-picked group of our earliest testers and partners receive the permanent Pioneer badge and a special Pioneer frame around their avatar.
They can claim two weeks of Pro once: unlimited hearts, double lesson XP and priority support. It starts when they tap Claim, not before.
If a Pioneer is already on a paid plan, the gift is saved for later instead of being wasted.
Their Profile shows "Pioneer Pro · N days left".
11. Profile refresh
Level and Plan (Free / Student / Pro / Premium) sit as small cards next to your rank.
A pencil icon next to your name opens Edit Profile.
Edit Profile is redesigned: live preview card, better name field, 3×3 avatar grid.
Claim cards for referral hearts and Pioneer Pro appear here when you have one.
12. Pop-ups and sheets, rebuilt
Every bottom sheet in the app — Edit Profile, Contact us, bug reports, AI consent, What's New, delete account, plans — now uses one shared design: the background fades, only the panel slides.
Centre dialogs use a new shared style that fades in place.
Contact us has reworked category chips and fields.
Fixed: on iOS, the WIKA Plans prompt could appear while What's New was still closing and leave an invisible layer that blocked every tap.
The "Report sent, salamat!" thank-you now waits for the bug-report sheet to close.
13. Lessons and content
Pictures inside lesson text. Emoji in questions and answers are drawn as WIKA's own illustrations, and strings like 🍎🍎🍎 or 🐕🏫 show every picture instead of just the first.
Picture-matching is clearer. When two answer cards would show the same picture, each card also shows its word.
Matching pairs is fairer. When several cards read exactly the same, any of them counts as correct.
Accent pairs sound right. In Tagalog and Ilocano, word pairs that differ only by an accent or glottal stop (like bata / bata') are now spoken by the same voice, so you can actually hear the difference.
Two Tagalog listening questions had answers that didn't match their options — fixed.
Unit cards read UNIT N clearly; Stage 0 unit numbering fixed; unit titles use plain-English names.
14. Everything else
New navigation bar with filled icons.
Smooth slide-up entrance on tab lists and shimmering loading placeholders.
The stats bar (rank, streak, XP, hearts, Gold) stays on Home and is hidden on Missions, Practice, Shop and Dictionary for a cleaner view.
The WIKA Plans pop-up on Home shows at most once per app launch.
Settings → Notifications is now one master switch for every notification WIKA sends.
How v1.1 reaches you
v1.1 arrives over the air. If you have WIKA 1.0.1, you don't need to visit the App Store or Google Play. Open the app once to download the update, and it's ready the next time you open WIKA.
We release server changes and the app update on the same day, in a fixed order, so no one sees a half-finished feature.
Under the hood (for the curious)
8 database migrations across the five branches (Pioneer 2, Referral 3, v1.1 3), all tested on our staging servers first. Every rule that involves points, hearts or Gold is enforced on the server, so nothing can be faked from the app.
Hearts math has a new "refilling" flag on every wallet, so the app and the server always agree on when the next heart arrives.
Streak Restore works because WIKA now remembers the streak a reset replaced.
The leaderboard now sends streak, level and lessons for every player, so profile cards open instantly.
The released app keeps working while the server is upgraded: every new field is optional, so the server can go first and the app update follows the same day.
What's not in v1.1 (yet)
Share your result to Instagram Stories — needs a new app store build.
Choosing more than one answer during onboarding — needs a server change that keeps
older phones working; not started.
Invite links that open the app — shared links show your code, but tapping one doesn't open WIKA yet. Typing the code works everywhere.
The multi-lesson stage runner, used only for languages without a seeded course, does not get the practice round or the rank screen yet.
Credits
Built by the WIKA PH team in September 30, 2026, with thanks to our Pioneers and every learner who sent a bug report. Maraming Salamat!
