The Pocket Scavenger
Penguin Group USA
£2.99 on Apple iOS
The Pocket Scavenger is an app that could have been really good.
As its name suggests, it’s an app which provides you with a list of things to scavenge, ranging from easy to find (‘The Number Five’ or ‘A Piece of Moss’) through to the more difficult (‘Something From The Year You Were Born’ and ‘Samples of Handwriting From Five Different People’). When you find the item, you tick it off by adding a photo, location and story to it, and if you want, you can add more than one example of an item.
You can also choose to get an ‘alteration’ for every scavenger item, which is kind of like a scavenger hunt of a scavenger hunt – this alteration will give you a task to perform with your scavenged item, such as turning it into a landscape or drawing the item and photographing it, and the original, together.
There’s the option to share your scavenge on Twitter or Facebook and this is where the app fell down for me. It repeatedly failed to recognise my Twitter login and then also relies on your Twitter account having your location info turned on – something you can’t change on the Twitter mobile website or app. Even once this was changed, I had to sign into Twitter each time I wanted to share my scavenges. Unfortunately, you need to be signed into Twitter to see other people’s scavenges on the map provided (but you can see your own fine).
I can see this app being lots of fun with a friend exploring a new city – I love scavenger hunts and I’ve even done my own with friends, with better things to find and better results, and without paying £2.99 for it.
As it was, I found the app annoying to use and generally just forgot I had it, although one of the more motivating factors is the Quick Scavenge option which gives you a number on the list you need to tick off.
This app costs £2.99 and it just simply isn’t worth that much, given the hassle and the amount of motivation I felt to use it. Instead, make up your own list of scavenges, take photos of you and your friends doing it, and share it on Twitter that way.
