Looking for fun and adventure this weekend?
Enjoy the odd puzzle, treasure hunt, escape room, geocache or scavenger hunt?
Take up the challenge and play www.wanderlist.co.uk
Further Detail
Local entrepreneurs have created a fun (and free!!) real-world puzzle game called WanderList, which challenges people to get out there and solve the puzzles to bag themselves the numerous WanderLists that are dotted in and around various towns and cities in South Yorkshire.
Whether they want to be a sole wanderer or play with/challenge their friends and family, WanderList is a people game designed to gently work our brain muscles and our physical muscles in a fun way. All you need is a smartphone (eg: iPhone/Android) or tablet (eg: iPad/Samsung) that has 4G/5G data capabilities to play.
Why South Yorkshire you might ask? Because we were born and bred in South Yorkshire and where best to start the inception of this game but God’s own county.
How it Works
How to play the game is explained on the 'How it works' page on our www.wanderlist.co.uk website, but just to give the barnsleyi readers a bit more inside info, the WanderList types work as follows:
Walker (green ones) – all of the puzzle answers are located within the town centre and the puzzles are virtually all simple pictorial ones, for example, Barnsley Town Hall, a picture of a prominent street sign, etc. The green ones are designed for beginners, families, etc. It’s more about the journey than the head-scratching.
Hiker (blue ones) – all of the puzzle answers are again located within the town centre, but the puzzles are a bit more involved. They might be a cryptic clue that needs to be worked out, a graphical metaphor of a place or thing, a historical photo that might represent a place or thing from a time gone by, etc. As a literal example, one of the puzzles in Barnsley is actually a place spelt out in sign language.
The beauty of players using their phones to play the game is that they have an amazing resource at their fingertips to assist them in solving a puzzle.
Due to the active nature of the game, it’s more important to us that players get out and about in Barnsley than anything else. We wanted them to spend most of their time moving around rather than hours trying to figure out a puzzle. We also wanted the game to try and encourage the player to speak to local people for assistance. That’s why we’ve tended to use local heroes in some of the puzzles so that the locals would probably identify them straight away, but a visiting player might not.
Wanderer (purple ones) – this type is a bit more involved and more suited to hardcore players. The puzzle answers can be in the town centre *and* the surrounding areas. The objective of this level is to challenge the more adventurous players.
Special (yellow ones) – Once the number of players increases we plan to do event-type WanderLists whereby we will only release them on a particular day in a particular location (as a WanderList Challenge) so that players can sign up and compete against each other. They’ll be able to keep track of how well they are doing at any time by looking at the challenge league table. Hopefully, this will create a bit of a buzz on the day and for the town.
These guys love interaction...
"It would be great if we could do something like a Barnsley Interactive challenge in the future with some kind of prize to the winner. We're also hoping that local businesses will embrace the buzz and piggyback on it by offering players something like discounted meals, drinks, etc."
So watch this space!
Charitable intentions too...What's not to like?
We’ll also be doing charity-driven Special ones where we’ll ask competitors to donate to a particular charity before we give them the access code to join the challenge. Hopefully, this will create a few pennies for a few charities as well.
The Barnsley Interactive Team wish the guys at WanderList the very best of luck with this fantastic initiative.
Comments