Badges, holo badges and the badge book

Ask a child what they liked best about a Clever Trails walk and there's a good chance the answer will be "the badges". Collecting something at every stop gives a walk a satisfying rhythm, and it gives children a reason to come back for the next story.

Here's how badges work, including the two rare ones hidden in every story.

A badge at every stop

Each Clever Trails story has six stops. At every stop there are three badges to earn:

• The little explorer badge, for completing the little challenge.
• The big explorer badge, for completing the harder challenge.
• The mission badge, for spotting the thing the narrator asked you to look for on the way.

The mission is announced as you set off from each stop: spot a feather, find an acorn, a conker or a seed, walk as quietly as a fox. Keep your eyes open while you walk and tap it off when you find it.

Every badge has its own artwork, made for the story it belongs to. A dinosaur story has dinosaur badges; a fairy story has fairy ones.

Two rare badges

At the end of each story there are two more badges, and each has a rare holographic edition.

The discoverer badge

Earned by finishing the story. To get the holo version, spot every mission on the way in a single walk. It rewards the explorers who keep looking between stops, not just at them.

The champion badge

Also earned at the end. The holo version goes to explorers who have collected all eighteen stop badges for that story, little, big and mission. That might take more than one walk, and that's the idea.

Holo badges shimmer and shift as you tilt the phone, a bit like a shiny trading card. They're deliberately hard to get, so earning one feels like a proper achievement.

The badge book

Every badge lives in the badge book, which works like a sticker album. Each story has its own page with a numbered space for every badge. You can see how many spaces there are, but you only see a badge once you've earned it.

Tap an empty space and you'll get a gentle hint about how to earn it. Tap a badge you've already got and you'll see when you earned it and how many times.

The rare holo spaces sit at the bottom of each page, so it's always clear what's left to find.

Badges for every explorer

Clever Trails is built for families, so badges belong to each child, not to the phone. If two children walk together, both earn badges for the challenges they do. A little explorer who completes their challenges at every stop gets a full set of little badges; a big explorer can go after the harder ones.

Children's profiles stay on your phone. Nobody needs an email address to collect badges.

Tips for badge hunters

1. Listen for the mission as you leave each stop. It's easy to miss if everyone's chatting.
2. Give the spotting job to someone specific. A toddler is often the best spotter in the family.
3. Don't worry about missing one. You can walk the story again, and lots of families do.
4. Try a different story for a whole new page of the book.

Start your collection

Every play-anywhere story comes with its own set of badges. The Rainbow Crystals, with Marigold the fairy, has some of our favourite artwork, and The Sunshine Games has a badge for nearly every sport you can think of. Find them all on the Discover page.