Magical Trails

Magical Trails is a location-based storytelling platform that turns real-world places into interactive adventures.

I built it to help schools, PTAs and community groups create story-driven trails where children explore their local area, unlock characters, solve challenges and uncover the next chapter of a bigger narrative. Posters become portals. Street corners become story beats. A quiet footpath becomes the setting for a heroic quest.

I had the idea during the pandemic while taking my kids out for their daily exercise. We’d done some paper-based trails where you scribbled answers on a worksheet, but as a developer with creative tendencies I couldn’t help wondering whether I could build a more interesting digital experience.

Technically, Magical Trails is a full-stack web application built in a mono-repo. The backend and trail editor are built with Next.js, with Supabase handling authentication, database storage and media uploads. The client experience runs as a React PWA, designed to work smoothly on mobile without requiring an app store download. Interactive elements use WebGL and THREE.js where appropriate, with features such as GPS geofencing and OpenCV-based image recognition allowing real-world locations and objects to unlock story progression. Underneath the playful exterior is a structured trail schema, location rules engine and modular page system that make it flexible enough to support very different types of experiences.

So far I’ve run four trails, all of which have raised money for my kids’ school PTA.

The first prototype was a scrappy Easter adventure involving crocheted creatures, inspired by some handmade stress toys that had become popular in the school playground. It was rough around the edges, but it proved the concept.

The second full public trail, The Great Christmas Candy Cane Quest, sent families across Hiltingbury to recover Santa’s lost Infinity Candy Canes, unlocking characters, puzzles and mini-games at each stop. It worked, loadsvof families walked the route. Kids were engaged. And Christmas was, in fact, saved.

The third trail evolved into The Easter Detectives, introducing code-breaking and image recognition. Instead of simply entering a word from a poster, players had to scan real-world signposts to "reveal hidden messages" and progress the story. It felt more like being part of a secret agency than following a map.

The fourth trail experimented with augmented reality photo challenges, blending physical locations with playful digital overlays. Each iteration has pushed both the technical architecture and the storytelling a little further.

If Magical Trails ever becomes truly successful, I would love to collaborate with established authors and illustrators to build richer, professionally written story worlds. For now, I write the stories myself and create the visuals with the help of modern AI tools. The leap in AI image generation over the past year has been remarkable. Tools like Midjourney and Nano Banana can now produce consistent characters across multiple scenes, opening up narrative possibilities that simply weren’t practical before.

Below are some of my favourite images from the trails. They represent not just evolving artwork, but an evolving idea: that ordinary spaces can become stages for shared adventures.