[seanccox]

A few years ago, I designed some paper-based puzzle quests for friends visiting historical sites in Istanbul, and around that time I heard about a US company doing something similar on a mobile device: SCVNGR.

I don't code, and mobile tech is unreliable for short-term visitors to Istanbul, so I never bothered trying to port the content to a device. Basically though, the solutions to puzzles are used to decipher new material and explore the spaces more thoroughly. For example, everyone who goes to the Hagia Sophia visits the mosaic portrait of the Empress Zoe, but not everyone knows about the Viking runes carved into a stone banister, so the idea was to link things and challenge people to explore, and then to use what they had found to unlock other puzzles.

It was clunky as shit on paper, and sometimes friends would give up or call to ask for clues, but they said they enjoyed it (or they were really, really polite). On a device, I'm sure that sort of interaction would be simple, and it's something I still toy with learning to build, but Istanbul keeps happening to me and getting in the way.