When Anne Lindsay, the owner of Muskoka’s Incredible Race, was approached by Romanian app developers last summer to develop a storyline along the Hunters Bay trail for their app, Leplace World, she thought that it was a hoax.
“I ignored the emails for several weeks,” she said, “until curiosity got the best of me.”
As it turned out, the young owners of Leplace World are Ph.D. and Masters students in Computer Science who were looking to partner with companies that create and organize outdoor experiences.
“What they have created is a next-generation treasure-hunting experience,” explained Lindsay. Through their Leplace World mobile phone app, participants have access to storylines from around the world and, she said, this is the first storyline that is based in Canada. Once participants choose a storyline based on their location, they are immersed in an interactive storyline as they move through the area.
“The storyline for Huntsville came naturally,” explained Lindsay. She chose to focus on the influence of Huntsville and this area on the life, love, art and mystery surrounding one of Canada’s most famous artists, Tom Thomson.
Writing the storyline, meeting virtually with the app developers and testing out the technology was about a four-month process. “Because some of the checkpoint locations are not associated with established Google map locations, it took me many test runs to make sure that the app, which shows your location as you move through the route, lined up with all checkpoints,” explained Lindsay.
One of the interactive checkpoints involves locating highlighted Tom Thomson murals within the downtown core within a certain time limit and another involves finding and taking a photo of the giant photo of Tom Thomson and his local love, Winnie Trainor, underneath the swing bridge and hypothesizing about the mystery surrounding his death in 1917.
“The technology they have developed is impressive,” said Lindsay. For instance, when you are discovering some of the downtown Huntsville murals based on Tom Thomson’s art, the app senses when you are close by and will notify you.
“It was important to me that this experience involves moving through downtown Huntsville and exploring the area,” she said. “It is a new way to engage tourists and locals in the Tom Thomson story and our downtown core.”
The Leplace World app is available to download on Apple apps or Google Play. The Tom Thomson mystery storyline begins and ends at Avery Beach Park.
“In the end, the Romanian app developers became quite fascinated with the Tom Thomson story and impressed by the natural beauty of our area. It’s been quite an interesting ride!” she noted.
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Yes, like most mobile scavenger hunts, it does cost to download the storyline.
Here’s a website address to use for a more direct connection and a price under $20: https://connect.leplace.online/storyline?storyId=367&token=Fq6Qsur5JV2l2G6jIz8JYwhPfeSXUGkkvpITRrrPJu5GwUX3ZL
The storyline can then be shared amongst the group using the phone. The location permission it asks for seem to be necessary for the GPS function of the storyline to work.
Best of luck!
Hmm… I was excited, and installed.
I didn’t like all of the permissions it asked for, and then — it seems to me — it wanted $20 to unlock the Huntsville module. I uninstalled instead. 🙁
Congratulations, Anne! So proud of you and your new adventure. Inviting joy and learning with your story line, participants are sure to create memories as they travel through our wonderful town. Bravo!
This is fantastic! What a great way to promote our community. Congrats, Anne.