A game you can finish
Six quests, four journey routes, a toucan you earn the right to fly with. No account, no grinding, no fail state.
How it plays →World 01 of 7 · Free · No account
Understand a volcano — don't just look at it.
Play a short adventure through a real map of Arenal. Earn your wings from a toucan, uncover what happened here on a July morning in 1968, and leave with a trip you could actually take.
Prototype Arenal is playable and in active playtesting. Some encounters are still placeholder art.
The hill that woke — Families farmed these slopes believing the mountain above them was finished. Find out what it actually was.
Reward: carried toucan flightSix quests, four journey routes, a toucan you earn the right to fly with. No account, no grinding, no fail state.
How it plays →Every place and date cites where it came from, and says so plainly when it still needs a local reviewer to confirm it.
See the evidence →The same 53 places, in your pocket in Costa Rica. Works offline, finds what is near you, keeps the photograph you took there.
Companion mode →One content graph behind all three. A place you found by flying over it and a place you found by standing in front of it are the same entry.
Player select · Choose your route
Your traveler changes the route, pace and advice — never the facts underneath.
Volcano on your own terms
Golden hour together
Little explorers of Arenal
Arenal highlights together
Quest log · Handed to you by Don Rafa
An elder who grew up in La Fortuna points you at questions. He never answers them — the sourced entries do.
Not a virtual tour · Every claim is cited
Eight history entries run underneath the world, from villages sealed in ash four thousand years ago to the morning in 1968 that decided what this region would become. This is one of them, exactly as the game shows it.
Arenal erupted violently without warning on 29 July 1968, destroying three communities on its western side and killing 78 people.
The eruption opened three new craters on the west flank and swept the settlements of Tabacón, Pueblo Nuevo and San Luís with lateral blast and debris, devastating around 15 square kilometres. It ended the assumption that the mountain was safe and began four decades of activity that would eventually create the tourism economy.
We publish 78, the figure in USGS OFR 91-591 and the RSN anniversary report. Popular sources cite 87, which appears to fold in deaths on 31 July among people who re-entered the zone.
“I could sit here and tell you the whole story. You would nod, and you would have forgotten it by dinner. So no. Go and find it yourself, and it will stay with you.”
Don Rafa A fictional composite of the generation that was small here in 1968
Companion mode · Preview
Standing in La Fortuna with a phone is a different problem from sitting at a desk. Companion mode is the same 53 places with no 3D at all — it finds what is near you by GPS, works with no signal, and never touches your battery for a WebGL scene you do not need.
Read this before you rely on it. Standing points are currently desk-derived from open map data and have not yet been walked by a local reviewer. Treat it as a preview, not a safety guide. The summit, crater and archaeological sites are deliberately not GPS targets at all.
Archive photograph shown as an example of the pairing.
William Melson, 1968, Smithsonian — CC0.
Local stories.
Real places.
Measurable intent.
One launch partner · Lodges & operators
Guests explore first, learn why somewhere matters, save a plan, then continue to you with attribution intact. No banner ads in the world, and route ordering stays independent of who pays.
Before you go · Practical answers
The driest stretch is roughly December–April, with clearer volcano views. Green season (May–November) brings fuller forests, fewer crowds, and afternoon rains — still excellent for hot springs and canopy.
No. Trails explore the national park and old lava fields around the base; the summit and crater are closed. Viewpoint and forest walks are the real experience.
World 01 · Arenal is waiting
Six quests. Fifty-three places. One living miniature of Costa Rica.
Play Arenal free