Randonautica advertises itself as the first “choose your own adventure reality game”. The app generates a random location close to you so that you can discover somewhere new in your neighbourhood, but, here’s the twist, it might not be random at all. You see, before providing a location, the app asks you to set an intention for your location. This could be anything at all, from dogs to something blue, the app doesn’t guide you, just merely asks you to set one.
The Randonautica app became increasingly popular over the past few months whilst most countries have been in lockdown. Users wanted to explore new areas but were limited to being close to home, so it seemed like the perfect solution. However, people began to report strange coincidences from using the app: from simply finding a red sofa in the middle of a field after setting the ‘red’ intention, to more chillingly a group of teens apparently finding a dead body. All these pages of strange stories definitely made me curious, even if I was deeply sceptical of the whole thing.
James and I decided to give it a try, both of us convinced people were choosing intentions that were too broad, or simply willing their intention to be true by seeking out anything to match. It’s fair to see neither of us believed anything would happen other than provide us with confirmation that this app was silly.
As I was generating a location we decided on the intention of “food” (we’re simple folk). Who knows, maybe we’d find a new restaurant or supermarket? Annoyingly, the first few locations kept sending us to private property, so I actually tried 4 or 5 different times (all with the food intention) before settling on a location about 15 minutes away from our place.
Well, you know what’s coming right, look what we found…
Yep, it lead us down some side alley in an entirely residential area that we’d walked through many times before, and we found a strawberry and a tomato. I was actually speechless. Neither of us knew quite what to think! Granted, we chose a pretty broad intention but there was literally nothing else in this location other than doors. It was just so strange.
A day later I’m still pretty shocked, but I’m curious to see if what would happen if we tried again. Is it just one huge coincidence or is something weirder going on? My money is still on the coincidence, but I’m intrigued to find out!
New Day, New Thing 