Katujahti
In the media
Articles about Katujahti and the story of how the family’s walking game began.
The first stories about Katujahti have been published. Here they are, along with my own post about how an article read by my wife Johanna grew into the idea for Katujahti.
Aamulehti reports on Katujahti's release and unexpectedly strong response. Released without advertising, the game rose within days to third place among free adventure games in Finland's App Store.
The story also covers the work of around one hundred beta testers, the wait for the Android release and the rapid development based on player feedback.
Ilkka-Pohjalainen explains how the free Katujahti app turns city walking into a game: streets are captured by walking them in real life. In Seinäjoki, players have 2,316 streets and hundreds of kilometres to explore.
The story presents Katujahti as a Finnish feel-good exercise game that encourages people to see familiar neighbourhoods from a new perspective.
Building and testing Katujahti added 120 kilometres to my walking total. Tampere Today wrote about the project and how the streets of Finland ended up on the map of a walking game.
The first version was built quickly, but Katujahti has reached its current form with the help of active beta testers, their observations, bug reports and ideas.
Aamulehti asked how Katujahti began. My wife, author Johanna Hulkko, had read a Helsingin Sanomat story about Pentti Arajärvi walking every street in Helsinki. The conversation that followed first became a walking game for our family and eventually grew into Katujahti.
This was the first time I shared the full story publicly. The article Johanna had read sparked the idea of collecting streets. We started thinking together about whether it could become a game that encouraged our family to get outside.
I built the first version, and a group of beta testers soon joined in. Their feedback has shaped street detection, the map and the way the app works. The small family project grew slightly larger than planned.
Writing about Katujahti? Email me: jussi.kallioniemi@radiant.fi