Mystery Walks App - tips

Tips

Contents

    Buying mysteries

    Normal behaviour: mysteries are sold as in-app purchases so on pressing "Buy mystery", Android pops up a box for Google to take a payment and the purchase is stored in your Google account. The app is then notified of the purchase and should download the mystery.

    Trouble making a purchase

    If you want to disable Android's requirement for a password when paying, see here.

    If you're having problems with purchasing a mystery (e.g. the device is failing to connect to Google's servers), the following have been to found to resolve most issues:

    The first thing to quickly eliminate is that in-app purchases are not disabled via Android parental controls.

    A reliable way rule out any issues with the wifi connection (e.g. router blocking Google's servers or invisibly redirecting the request to a login page) is to briefly disable wifi and test it using mobile data.

    Next thing is to eliminate is any form of corruption or malfunction on the device:

    • It's worth doing a phone restart in case Android has got itself confused.
    • If you haven't previously purchased any mystery walks (so there is nothing to lose on your device), do an uninstall/reinstall of the app just in case the app didn't install cleanly (which can cause all sorts of weird behaviour).

    It that doesn't sort it then it's most likely some kind of problem with the Google's purchasing system in Android which is what the app defers to for buying mysteries:

    • Clear the caches of both the Google Play services and Google Play Store components of Android, check these are up-to-date and if not update them.
    • Check the date and time are correct on the device (as Android uses timestamps to cache responses from Google servers)
    • It's worth checking if the payment card has expired. The Android payments troubleshooting guide may be helpful for ensuring a valid payment method has been set up.
    • Finally, if none of that revives your Android purchasing system, Google support should be able to help sort out any problem with your Google account and payment setup, or help if Android itself is misbehaving.

    Update and clear caches of Google Play

    To update and clear the caches of the Google Play apps using for purchasing mysteries on Android, do the following:

    Play Services
    • Go to Android Settings > Applications > Google Play services
    • See if an update is available - if so install
    • In Storage section, delete the Cache and also the Data

    Play Store
    • Go to Android Settings > Applications > Google Play Store
    • See if an update is available - if so install
    • In Storage section, delete the Cache and also the Data
    • Also if Google Play Store is currently running (check in task manager), kill it by swiping it off the list (so the running copy isn't holding onto stale data)
    • Close and re-open the Mystery Walks app then open the page for a mystery to let it try to request purchase details again

    Not sure if purchase went through

    You can confirm the purchase was successful and was stored in your Google account using the guide here.