Treasure Island Adventure, the 2026 Taiwan Outdoor Education Season: Gamified Monster Collecting That Brings Families to Outdoor Programs
Once outdoor education venues across Taiwan had been organized into a map that is easy to browse, the next question was: how do you get parents to actually take their kids outside? The 2026 Taiwan Outdoor Education Season brought together 10 major ministries for 22 weeks, from April 1 to August 31, connecting 180+ venues and 470+ activity programs.
POLISH™ built "Treasure Island Adventure", the campaign site on the Outdoor Education Resource Platform, pairing every program with a monster that can be collected and evolved, and turning "looking things up" into an adventure that starts on a phone and ends on site.
- Each of the 470+ programs has its own monster; collecting it unlocks the program
- Evolve monsters with online quizzes, then reach the final form with on-site GPS check-ins
- After the season, the site switched to a review mode with leaderboards open without login
1. From "Finding a Venue" to "Wanting to Take the Kids Out"
Since the Outdoor Education Resource Platform launched, teachers have been able to find suitable teaching venues on its map. This time the audience extended beyond teachers to students and families, with programs spanning culture, nature, ecology, the ocean, industry, Hakka villages and Indigenous communities. But the programs were run by different agencies, each with its own schedule and sign-up process. A plain list was unlikely to convince a family to head out.
POLISH™ designed the whole campaign as a collecting game: every activity program has its own monster, and play boils down to three steps: explore venues, collect monsters, win prizes. Before entering the map, players are dealt a random exploration partner, which they can reroll; once chosen, it becomes their avatar on the map. Everything runs in the browser, with no app to download.
2. Collect Online, Evolve On Site: One Program, Three Stages
Each monster has three stages. Lv1 "First Encounter": open a venue marker on the map and tap "Collect" to get the monster, unlock the program details and earn energy. Lv2 "Growing Through Exploration": answer a three-choice quiz about the program. Lv3 "Full Evolution": visit the venue, verify the visit by GPS and share a field report. The bar rises step by step, building interest online before bringing people on site.
On-site verification covers a 500-meter radius around each venue, and the location is read only once, when the player taps "Start Verification". There is no continuous tracking and no movement history. Cheating is handled by rules: a check-in is rejected if the implied speed since the previous one exceeds 120 km/h, and mock-location tools are detected. Because many players are children, users under 14 need a parent's email consent to register, and players can choose to appear anonymously on the leaderboards.
Players can share the monsters they collect: the system automatically generates an exploration card showing the monster, the venue and a personal invite link, and friends who open it land straight on the partner selection page. Once approved by the platform, field reports appear under the venue's "Field Reports" tab on the map, so the next family can read real experiences before setting out.
3. A Reason to Come Back Every Week, Every Month and All Season
Keeping momentum for 22 weeks called for rewards on different rhythms. Every 100 exploration energy points automatically became one draw ticket, with draws every Friday at 8 p.m. and a bonus draw each month; across the whole season, there were two leaderboards, one for power and one for energy. Collecting, quizzes, visits, field reports and inviting friends all earned energy and "Outdoor Badges", and each month a limited-time BOSS monster tied to a ministry's featured activity appeared.
4. Smooth on Mobile, Easy to Use, and Still Online After the Season
Thousands of monster images were exported as AVIF in five sizes by use: map and list thumbnails average about 2 KB, collection cards about 8 KB and program detail images about 21 KB, keeping browsing smooth on phones. The campaign homepage was also adjusted to the AA accessibility standard: the rotating subtitle uses aria-live, decorative images are aria-hidden, and each program card's button carries an aria-label with the program name.
When the season closed on August 31, the site did not go offline; it switched to a review mode. The front end and back end share a single deadline: the back end stops every action that adds energy or power, while logging in, choosing a partner and viewing personal records remain available. Final rankings were frozen on September 1, and the leaderboards became viewable without logging in. The homepage, partner page and map all show that the season has ended.
Website: https://outdoor.moe.edu.tw/2026
