Stargard, Poland – Anawiki Games is expanding its horizons with the release of a new app that’s part game, part travel companion. World Uncovered aims to take users to places they’ve never been, all while encouraging them to examine their daily routines.
It’s a simple concept with the potential to go far: A “gamified” world map which tracks the user’s travels and rewards them for visiting new places. When the app is first installed, the map is completely covered up. By traveling around – whether on foot or by road, sea or air – the user begins to uncover the map. They score points in the process, which they can add to through various types of achievements, including visiting famous landmarks. Those scores can then be shared through social media and with friends, creating friendly competition to encourage users to switch up their routines and see more of the world.
“We’re really excited about this product,” says Anawiki owner Roman Budzowski, “It’s a bit of a departure for us, because it both is and isn’t a game, in the traditional sense anyway. I love to travel, and I love games, so it made sense to me to combine the two, and I think anyone else who enjoys those two things will agree.”
World Uncovered allows users to display their map in one of four modes. The first and most basic is “Uncovered,” which simply shows the map with visited locations uncovered. The other three employ colour-coding to enhance the experience: Height uses a colour gradient to display topographical information; Speed mode shows different-coloured tracks depending on how fast the user was travelling; and Routes changes the colour of paths as the user retraces their steps, providing a map of daily routines and favourite destinations.
The app is optimized to conserve battery power and is extremely easy to use: It’s just one tap to start recording a journey, and another tap to stop. Navigating through the four modes and exploring the map is equally simple and intuitive.
“There’s really no one way to use this app,” says Budzowski, “That’s the beauty of it. It makes the whole world one big sandbox game. You can try to hit all the world’s biggest landmarks, walk every street in your town, climb your country’s tallest peaks, whatever you want. It’s up to you what kind of game you want to make it, and the app just takes care of all the scorekeeping for you.”
World Uncovered knows the locations of over 120 of the world’s greatest landmarks, and keeps your checklist updated automatically whenever users visit one. The Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, Big Ben, Machu Picchu, the Golden Gate Bridge, Great Pyramids, Westerplatte, the Burj Khalifa, the Colosseum, Sagrada Familia, Petronas Towers and many more sights await users.
Importing data from GPS devices other than the iPhone is easy, as is migration from Fog of World, for users of that app. There’s also an option to enable cloud backup via Dropbox, but on an opt-in basis for privacy reasons.
“People have valid concerns about location tracking on modern devices, so we’ve made privacy a top priority. World Uncovered only records your travels when you’ve told it to, and by default, that data is stored only locally. It’s never sent to our servers for any reason, and the backup and social media sharing functionality is only activated at the user’s discretion.”
Device Requirements:
* iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
* Requires iOS 8.1 or later
* 11.7 MB
Pricing and Availability:
World Uncovered 1.0 is free to download and use for the first 270 miles/500 kilometers of travel and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Travel category. Unlimited use is a one-time unlock for $1.99 (USD) during launch promotion period.
World Uncovered 1.0
Download from iTunes
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Based in Stargard, Poland, Anawiki Games was founded in 2004 as a small independent game developer, with a focus on casual games, emphasizing storytelling as well as game play. Copyright (C) 2016 Anawiki Games. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac OS X, iPhone, iPad, and iPod platforms are trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.