Coming to iPhone, iPad, and iPhone Duo

Go outside.
Watch your map fill in.

ExposurePal is a map of your real life that starts covered in fog. Walk, ride, or drive somewhere and the fog clears along the way. Stop somewhere for a while and a camp appears there. Go back and the camp grows.

There is nothing to start or stop. Keep the phone in your pocket and the map fills in while you are out.

1

Fog clears where you have been, and it stays cleared.

2

Places you stop at become camps. Camps you go back to grow.

3

Your map is stored on your phone. There is no account and no server.

How it works

What happens on a trip

Put the phone in your pocket and go somewhere. This is what the map does while you are out, whether or not you open the app.

Daytime. The traveler rides a bicycle up a revealed trail past a canal and a freshly built lighthouse, with pale fog contours beyond.
Go somewhere

Fog clears along your route as you move. Walking, running, cycling, and driving all count. The app works out which one from how fast you are going and draws your traveler to match.

Night by a river. The traveler stands with a lantern on a bridge, a small dog sitting beside them, with a cottage below and a gold contour ringing the revealed ground.
Stop

Stay somewhere for a couple of minutes and the traveler sits down. If it is a place you want to keep, pitch a camp. It stays on the map, and each visit levels it up.

A Welcome home card over the night map: 6.6 miles traveled, 1.7 miles from home marked Furthest yet, 436 acres of ground revealed, one camp, by foot, bike and car.
Get home

When you come back through your door the trip ends, and a summary card shows the distance, how much fog you cleared, and how far from home you got.

Cut-paper scene: a small red-and-white lighthouse with a lit lamp room and two pine trees, its beam sweeping across dark layered ground inside a gold contour ring.
Build

Long-press anywhere on the map to drop a blueprint: a cabin, a watchtower, a lighthouse, or a windmill. It gets built when you physically arrive there. That is the whole goal system, and you set every goal yourself.

Doggo

You've got company.

A little dog trots along behind you the whole way. It hops in the bike basket, rides shotgun in the car, and curls up by the fire when you stop. More of a cat person? Swap in a cat.

Cut-paper scene: a small brown dog sits beside a campfire of crossed logs on dark layered ground, inside a gold contour ring.
Cut-paper scene: a small hooded traveler in a teal felt cloak with a bedroll, holding a glowing lantern, a small dog sitting beside them, on layered dark ground ringed by one gold contour.
Why I made it

Leaving the house is easier when there is a reason to.

I made this because some days I did not leave the house, and a reason as small as a lighthouse two streets over turned out to be enough. Every trip changes the map in a way you can see afterwards, and the longer you are out, the more you bring home.

On your phone only

Your map stays on your phone.

There is no account and no server. The fog you have cleared, your camps, and any photos you add are stored on the phone. We cannot see them.

  • Nothing to sign up for inside the app.
  • Location is used to draw your map, never sent anywhere.
  • Fog never comes back on its own. Camps never fall down.
  • Delete the app and it's gone.

Get an email when it's out.

One message when ExposurePal ships for iPhone, iPad, and iPhone Duo. Nothing after that unless you ask.