Revel is a mobile app that turns sets of instructions, called challenges, into adventures and experiences that can be shared by friends or strangers.
How Challenges Begin
Players might find themselves in a challenge in several different ways:
- They choose a challenge for themselves.
- A friend suggests a challenge for them.
- Revel invites them to a challenge that is going on near them.
To select a challenge for oneself or a friend, a player navigates through our catalogue, which is organized into these challenge types:
- Appreciation
- Exploring
- Fitness Training
- Neighbors & Networks
- Leadership
- Photography
- Storytelling
Building Blocks
The building blocks of a challenge are fairly simple.
1. Finding players.
Players can be brought into a challenge in a few different ways:
- Players can choose a challenge for themselves, accept a friend's invitation, or be invited by Revel to participate. Revel doesn't distinguish between these methods. (We call this "gather".)
- Players can be involved in a challenge without asking their permission. (We call this "nab".)
- Players can be invited to a challenge based on some property that has been established by a previous challenge—for instance, that they're generous, that they're stealthy, that they're a good photographer, etc. (We call this "await".)
Note: You can choose which players to include by asking them questions about themselves—for instance, you could have a game of tug of war between people who like blue and people who like purple. It's best to specify how many players you need (e.g., exactly two or 3-6). And you can also assign players roles, like "spy", "patient", "dude"—these allow you to consider players separately in your challenge.
2. Communicating with players.
There are several ways to communicate with players.
- You can send them an instruction, like "take off one shoe". (We call this "tell".)
- You can get some information from them, like "What color shirt are you wearing?" (We call this "ask".)
- You can send them to a specific location. (We call this "assign".)
3. Timing.
You can also control timing with Revel.
- You can wait until several players have completed all of their tasks before proceeding. (We call this "sync".)
- You can simply wait. (We do this by saying "5 minutes later" or "one day later".)
4. Tricky stuff.
There's a couple more things that you can do.
- You can label a player. This can be based on the actions they took during your challenge, the things that were asked of them during your challenge, or simply random. Labels can be comprehensible—"generous" or "fierce" or "wicked"—or incomprehensible—"slithy" or "foorad" or "clarificandilatious".
- You can start another challenge.
- You can repeat your challenge.
Challenge Configurations
Often, a challenge falls into one or more of the following configurations.
A Solo:
A solo is any challenge that someone can do by themselves. It can contain just one instruction or a series of instructions.
Example: Pigeon's Eye View
Take a photo of the space you're in from the point of view of a pigeon.
Group Experience:
This takes place at a particular time and place, and involves a group of people. In the simplest version of a group experience, as seen in the example below, every player receives the same instructions.
Example: Fashion Week
Gather 3-7 people on a street corner. Players will scan the crowd for 5 minutes.
Upon noticing remarkable style choices in the crowd, approach these trendsetters
like the paparazzi might and ask them who they're wearing. Before taking their
photograph, make sure your stylish subject strikes a pose.
Multi-role:
In this scenario, there are multiple players who receive different sets of instructions.
Example: Stake Out
Gather two players; The Photographer and The Spy. Ask The Photographer
to describe what he's wearing. Challenge him/her to take a photo of a nearby
stop sign without being seen. Send The Spy the clothing description and
challenge her to catch the photographer on camera!
Sequence:
This is a solo or group experience where multiple instructions are revealed over time.
Example: Haiku
Gather 1 player. Tell player to spend 5 minutes observing his/her surroundings.
After 5 minutes, ask player to write a haiku about the observations.
Volley or Chain:
These are challenges that repeat over time, passing between multiple players. They are almost identical, except that in a volley the roles go back and forth (Andrew to Betty to Andrew to Betty, etc.) between two participants and in a sequence the roles get passed forward (Alicia to Bob to Carlos to Delonna, etc.).
Example: The Pushup Challenge
Pass back and forth between 2+ players. Challenge Player 1 to do pushups in a
weird place and log the number of reps. Player 1 then challenges Player 2 to do
even more pushups in another strange location. Log reps. Challenge Player 1.
Repeat.
Exchanging Social Information:
You can also collect social information from one player and pass it to another. If you look closer at "Stake Out" above, you'll notice that we asked for a clothing description from The Photographer and passed it to The Spy.
Example: Cheese Monte
Gather three players. Ask each player what kind of cheese they have. Trade
information (a > b, b > c, c > a), telling each player, "Someone near you has
'x cheese'. Take it!"
