Tourists in Kyiv can now explore Ukraine’s capital in a new and exciting way — through quest games provided by the WalQlike application.
Designed by a team of Ukrainians, the “walk you like” app offers thematic routes around top city sights. In order to discover the next stop, users have to answer questions about the place they are currently at. The app uses questions to share fascinating facts about the city.
WalQlike is free and available to download from the App Store and Google Play. It offers three languages: Ukrainian, Russian, and English.
The application first launched with quest games for Lviv in November 2018. The city of 720,000 people, located 540 kilometers west of Kyiv, is one of the top destinations for tourists in Ukraine. WalQLike now offers ten routes for exploring Lviv, with names like Interesting Sculptures, Sweet Lviv and Medieval Quest.
On May 30, the app’s team presented the first two quest routes around Ukraine’s capital: Family Kyiv and Fountains of Kyiv.
The first one includes 12 locations, starting with Zoloti Vorota (The Golden Gate), the rebuilt structure of Kyiv’s main gate in the 11th century, located in the historic city center. The route then leads visitors through other famous attractions.
After a user selects a quest, the application identifies the nearest sight and generates a tour that lasts from one to three hours. Users are supposed to move from one location to another, answering questions about each place they visit. For example, one of the questions on the Family Kyiv route asks what material the statue of a hedgehog on Reitarska Street is made of.
Beyond that, the questions provide fascinating details about the city, its inhabitants, and its buildings. The app’s team worked with locals and tour guides in order to find out the most interesting facts about the top sights in both Lviv and Kyiv.
Users can also compete to find out who is the fastest tourist to complete a quest. At the end of the tour, the app shows the time a user spent on the route and compares it to the best results of others.
WalQlike was produced by a young start-up of the same name. The company crowdfunded money to create the app and also received a grant from the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.
Its Kyiv-based team includes three members: designer Pavlo Klochko, project manager Stanislav Okolot, and application developer Taras Kolomoiets.
Okolot came up with the idea to create such an app in 2017. He says that, after one of his trips abroad, he realized he barely remembered anything from all the quick tours he took. As a result, he wanted to create an engaging way for tourists in Ukraine to explore the country’s cities.
The idea won the “Creative Business Cup Ukraine” competition, and the WalQlike team even went to Denmark to represent their country in the international final. All this helped with the development of the app.
“It’s a pleasure that our idea seems interesting to people and they believe in it. We were working really hard, but now we are proud of our own project,” Klochko told the Kyiv Post.
The creators will keep on improving the app and creating new routes. They say that, over the next half-year, they will add two new routes every month. In October, they plan to do the final presentation of all routes created for Kyiv.
And after Kyiv, the team will focus on creating routes for Odesa, the Black Sea port city of 1 million people located 470 kilometers southwest of Kyiv, and Kharkiv, an industrial city of 2 million people some 477 kilometers east of Kyiv.
