5 smartphone apps that use GPS technology to turn sightseeing into a game

A look at five smartphone exploration apps that take on the growing trend of gamification and augmented reality.

A man tries to catch a Pokemon Go character at the Trocadéro, in front of the Eiffel Tower, in Paris. The augmented-reality game ties collectable fantasy creatures to mobile-phone maps. Edward Berthelot / Getty Images
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There are hundreds and hundreds of smartphone travel apps out there, mostly designed to help you plan trips or book aspects of them. But a new breed of apps is taking two buzzwords – gamification and augmented reality – on board to bring fun to the travel ­experience.

Using GPS technology, these apps turn sightseeing into a game, tying virtual clues and collectables to real-life ­locations.

So instead of plotting a few chosen destinations on a map, mystery destinations – and surprising details about them – are unveiled as the game is played.

Either that, or artworks and other “treasures” are installed in the real world, and the smartphone apps are used to track them down. Either way, it’s game on.

GooseChase

GooseChase takes the smartphone scavenger-hunt idea to a logical conclusion by allowing people who have downloaded the app to create their own games. So if you want to conjure up your own trail through ­Dubai’s ­Bastakiya, requiring people to take photos to solve the clues, you can. Best of all, though, as long as it’s for personal use, you can have a go at the quests other people from all over the world have created.

www.goosechase.com

Pokemon Go

The craze of the past summer is finally starting to dwindle, and it’s hardly a dedicated travel or city-exploration app, but Pokemon Go has done a remarkable job of getting people to go out and explore.

An augmented-reality game, Pokemon Go works by tying collectable fantasy creatures to mobile-phone maps. To “catch” them, you have to go to the real life location.

These locations, dubbed Pokestops, are often parks or monuments, but there’s a wide variety, and they broadly match the type of Pokemon found there. So for example, water-based creatures are more likely to be found near a lake, pond or fountain.

www.pokemongo.com

Urban Adventure Quest

Aimed at travellers (or people exploring their own city), Urban Adventure Quest creates smartphone scavenger hunts that require clues to be solved in specific locations. So in New York, for example, that might mean finding the colour order of the M&Ms on display in the Times Square M&Ms store, then finding the name of a specific statue in Rockefeller Plaza. The quests have a habit of making you look at things you may otherwise gloss over, such as the bas-­reliefs on the Radio City Music Hall or the detail of a 9/11 firefighters’ memorial.

There are different quests for dozens of cities across the ­United States and Canada, including Key West, San Antonio, Portland and Vancouver.

www.urbanadventurequest.com

Urban Hunt Dubai

A Dubai-specific version of this concept can be downloaded from the App Store (iOS) or ­Google Play (Android), and takes a slightly more traditionalist form. Urban Hunt Dubai gives players a series of cryptic (but not too baffling clues) to certain places within the city. Players then have to go to those places, where they can collect virtual “Urban Coins”. The aim of the game is to collect all the coins as quickly as possible.

Wild in Art

As niches go, setting up trails of individually and ­colourfully ­decorated fibreglass animals in cities across the United Kingdom is a fairly cool one. This is the sterling work of Wild in Art, which works with charities and councils to set up the trails.

Recent efforts include a herd of elephants in Sheffield, ­England, and dozens of “snowdogs” in ­Newcastle, while next year’s events are headed by a stampede of safari animals in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, and a massive pack of brightly coloured bears in Birmingham.

These animal trails usually last for months and come with a downloadable app. That’s where the technology comes in. The animals are all mapped, and when you find them, you scan a QR code.

Scan enough of them by tracking them down in parts of the city you might not otherwise see, and you unlock awards – such as discounts at local cafes.

www.wildinart.co.uk

travel@thenational.ae