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
North-west Costa Rica Arenal Land of Fire
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.
- 53
- Places to find
- 06
- Quests
- 04
- Journeys
- 01
- World of seven
Prototype Arenal is playable and in active playtesting. Some encounters are still placeholder art.
01ArenalPlay now
Featured world · available now
Arenal: Land of Fire
Volcano · lake · hot springs · La Fortuna
Enter world →
Unlocked
Planned world
Quest 01
The hill that woke — Families farmed these slopes believing the mountain above them was finished. Find out what it actually was.
Reward: carried toucan flightWhat this is
A history that is sourced
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 →A guide for the ground
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
How do you roam?
Your traveler changes the route, pace and advice — never the facts underneath.
P1
↗
Active · flexible
Select →
P2
Backpacker
Volcano on your own terms
4 min5 stops
♥
Scenic · easy
Select →
P3
Couple
Golden hour together
3 min4 stops
◎
Friendly · curious
Select →
P4
Family
Little explorers of Arenal
4 min5 stops
✦
Social · highlights
Select →
Friends & groups
Arenal highlights together
4 min5 stops
Quest log · Handed to you by Don Rafa
Six things worth finding out
An elder who grew up in La Fortuna points you at questions. He never answers them — the sourced entries do.
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01
The hill that woke Everyone farmed it. Nobody knew what it was.Unlocks flight
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02
The lucky town La Fortuna means the fortune. Work out what it was lucky about.Title
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03
The drowned towns There are two villages under that water.Lore
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04
Waters of the fault Why the hot springs are where they are.Title
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05
Before the volcano People were here for millennia before it was scenery.Lore
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06
The full atlas Everything above, and the rest of the region.Title
Fly, once you have earned it
Finish the first quest and a keel-billed toucan carries you across the
region. A guide you fly with, never a mount.
Photograph anything
The shutter composes a captioned postcard and keeps a copy in your
compendium, filed against the place it shows.
Not a virtual tour · Every claim is cited
The part most
visitors never hear.
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.
29 July 1968
Unverified
The 1968 eruption
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.
Sources 4
- USGS Open-File Report 91-591
- Melson & Sáenz, Bulletin Volcanologique
- Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program
- RSN / OVSICORI anniversary report
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
- 2000 BCEVillages beneath the ash
- Pre-contactMaleku country
- 1968The hill that was not a hill
- 1979The lake that drowned two towns
- 2010The lava stops
Companion mode · Preview
Then take it
with you.
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.
- ◐Offline firstCaches on first load, because coverage fails exactly where the good places are.
- ◎Arrive to discoverWalk into range of a vetted standing point and the place unlocks itself.
- ▣SellosYour real photograph, kept beside the rendered one. The same subject, imagined and actual.
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.
Partner pilot · Arenal
Local stories.
Real places.
Measurable intent.
One launch partner · Lodges & operators
Three ways this earns its place.
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.
The game brings them inA destination experience guests finish and send to someone else.
The sourcing earns trustCited history is why a recommendation is worth following.
The companion proves arrivalAttributed evidence that a visitor came because of the product.
Start a conversation →
Seeking one Arenal lodge or operator for a 4–8 week pilot.
Before you go · Practical answers
Arenal, briefly.
When is the best time to visit Arenal?
+
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.
Can you hike to the crater of Arenal?
+
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
Ready to roam?
Six quests. Fifty-three places. One living miniature of Costa Rica.
Play Arenal free