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Touring through Tallinn with the Tallinna vanalinnaseiklus game

For families with teens and slightly older children visiting the capital of Estonia, you might not want to totally switch off your smartphone device. The reason isn’t so that you can scroll Instagram. Rather, it’s to try out a game that will show you around Tallinn in a slightly different way than you would on your own.

Photo from visitestonia.com

Promoted by Visit Estonia, the Estonian Tourist Board, Tallinna vanalinnaseiklus (Tallinn Old Town Adventure) is a mobile game made by the adventure company known as 360 KRAADI.

For 15 Euros, you can download the game to your smartphone, and a small group of players, such as a family visiting Tallinn on vacation, can walk around the Old Town and learn about its history in an entertaining way.

With the game open on your group's chosen device, moving towards specific historic points in the Old Town will prompt you to answer trivia questions. You'll need to be shrewd about avoiding certain areas in your quest to answer questions, because some locations will penalize you and drain points from your total score over the course of gameplay. The game lasts between an hour and a half to two hours. It takes place outdoors and it's possible to play it at any time of day or with any kind of weather conditions.

For large travel groups of over 12 people in size, you can book a session with the company to play another version of the game, where teams of three to five people are given a mobile device with the game loaded onto it. A company guide will be around to instruct players.

Beyond Tallinna vanalinnaseiklus is a roster of 360 KRAADI mobile games that will throw you into other cities in Estonia. Namely, the Jüri von Kaufmann series. In these games, you follow the trail laid out by a fictional German merchant, “…to go through as many different checkpoints on the map as possible, solve riddles, increase the score by giving the correct answers and thus find the message that Jüri left You.” These games have a fairly open-ended strategy and are not restricted in the time taken to complete them, so you can play at a more leisurely pace, or pick and choose which checkpoints you address first. Installments of the game can be accessed for the cities of Haapsalu, Kuressaare, Narva, Pärnu, Tallinn, Tartu, and Viljandi. While some families may wish to limit screen time on vacation, this shows us how the use of devices can be complementary to the physical, educational moments that travel gives us.

This company genuinely covers a full 360 degrees of adventure activities. From them, you can rent canoes, fat tire bikes for all-terrain cycling, touring skates, snowshoes, and more. But then you can also hire them to take you out on guided day trips, such as two hours of skating on a frozen bog, or a hike and a hearty outdoor meal prepared over a fire. Another offering for kids and teens is an activity session where participants learn how to build their own Formula One style race cars and race against each other in a final rally.

It makes sense why 360 KRAADI's products and services have been promoted by Visit Estonia. They provide clever solutions to address people's broadly different tastes in recreation across Estonia, whether you want to be in the city or the wilderness, with a guide or leading your own way.

This article was written by Vincent Teetsov as part of the Local Journalism Initiative.

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