Exploras
Begin exploring
An atlas of your own
You can know your way around a city and still know very little about it. The buildings become landmarks for giving directions, the streets become routes to somewhere else, and the stories behind them are easy to miss. Exploras exists to help you notice those places again, and to make learning their stories part of the pleasure of going outside.
How a walk becomes a discovery
01 Leaving room for discovery
Exploras deliberately begins with an incomplete map, because it’s hard to feel that you’ve discovered a place when everything about it has already been laid out for you. Paper fog covers the ground you haven’t explored, leaving you to decide which part to uncover next.
After setting down your home base, you might begin with a walk through the park toward the river. That route will still be uncovered when you return, and the next time you head out you can follow it farther. Walking and driving both leave their mark, so over time the atlas grows into a record of your travels.
See how discovery works
02 Getting to know a place
A blue wisp gives you a direction to follow while the place’s name remains hidden. At selected sights, a clue describes what to look for and begins to introduce its history, so you arrive with something more to recognize than its address.
Follow a discovery
A keepsake from
a place you’ve visited.
Choosing an unknown sight puts its blue wisp on your map, giving you somewhere to head without telling you everything about it. It might be a place you’ve passed before, but this time you have a reason to stop.
A clue might draw your attention to the windows or the shape of a roof, then tell you something about the people and events connected to the place. By the time you reach it, you’re looking for details you might otherwise have passed without a second glance.
When you arrive and uncover the sight, its name is revealed, bringing the clue and the place together. Take a photo in Exploras while you’re nearby to collect it, so your journal can keep the visit alongside the story that led you there.
App screenshots use scripted Nashville walks and sample photo illustrations. Launch sight collections begin in Nashville; authored clues and sourced stories are available at selected sights.
03 The routines around exploring
The app also gives you things to return to between discoveries: a companion to feed, a home to improve, and an explorer whose appearance you can change as you earn more.
Outfits unlock as your explorer levels up, while the Shop offers optional designs if you find a look you’d like to wear on the map.
Choose a dog, cat or bird and give them a name; feeding gets them ready for a walk, and walking together earns their pet levels and accessories.
When you unlock a building blueprint, you can use the supplies earned on your travels to build that design and improve it through its upgrade stages.
04 Finding a reason to go again
On days when you’d like a reason to go a little farther, an accepted challenge gives the walk a goal to work toward. Only that challenge progresses, and completing it earns its medallion before you choose what comes next.
Alongside those challenges are 1,000 explorer levels, with outfits, vehicles and building blueprints at milestones. The first levels come quickly; later rewards take longer to reach, so there’s something to work toward after you’ve settled into exploring.
You can choose each new challenge yourself, or let Exploras select the next one automatically.
Illustrated keepsakes and vehicles from Exploras
05 The same walk on another day
The map changes with the weather and time of day because those things are part of how you experience a place. Rain moves across the paper, snow falls over your route, and after sunset the warm windows at home stand out against the dark.
An optional exploration theme is arranged for the seasons, weather and night, with its volume separate from the sound effects. You can keep it quietly in the background or turn it off and listen to what’s around you.
A day exploring the streets around Broadway.
Silent recording · simulated weather
06 Remembering why you stopped
Back at home, the journal brings your route together with the sights, medals, photos and notes from the day. You can return to a place’s story or add something you noticed yourself, so the visit is remembered through more than the name on a map.
A shareable recap can show the whole outing or just the walking or driving, keeping a long car journey from overwhelming the walk you want to show. It gives that afternoon on foot its own view, close enough to see where you went.
An atlas of your own
The first sight collections begin in Nashville, while the map and travel progression can be used wherever you explore. Exploras is still growing, and each new sight needs its story researched and its details checked before it belongs in the collection.
An exploration game for iPhone & iPad.
Coming to the App Store.
Free to explore · Optional cosmetic purchases
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