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Wanderlust

Easter Eggs

Hide easter eggs, locked doors and clue chains with keys

Keys are the single mechanic behind every hidden thing in a tour: what they unlock, where you can set them today, and why they are not a security control.

Video walkthrough

Video coming soon. A recorded walkthrough of these exact steps will appear here.
Narration script

The walkthrough has not been recorded yet. This is the narration it will follow, step for step.

Let me explain keys, because once it clicks you realise every hidden thing in a tour is the same mechanic wearing different clothes. A key is just a short word you pick. Vault. Red door. Something hands it out, something else asks for it. That is the whole idea. Out of that one pair you get three shapes. An easter egg, which is a hotspot that stays invisible until the visitor holds the right key. A locked door or a maze, which is a scene link that stays shut until they do. And a clue chain, where opening one hidden thing hands over a key that opens a gate somewhere else, maybe in a hunt stop three steps later. Now the detail that makes this feel good instead of frustrating: locked things are absent, not greyed out. A locked link draws no arrow at all. A locked hotspot's marker is simply not there. Your visitor is not staring at a padlock being told no. And the moment they pick up the key they were missing, the arrow and the marker appear, without the panorama reloading and without losing which way they were facing. Now the honest part, and I would rather you hear it from me than find it. Right now you can set keys in exactly one place: on a hunt stop. Required keys, comma separated, when the stop opens on keys. And Grants this key when it opens, which every stop has. Keys on hotspots and on scene links are not editable in the studio yet. The viewer already honours them and the hunt checks already expect them, but there is no field for them, so easter eggs and locked doors cannot be switched on from the interface today. Stop to stop chains work fine. Ask us in a support thread before you plan a whole tour around the other two. And last: do not use keys as security. That is deliberate. Someone reading the page source can reach a locked scene, and for a game that is fine. If something genuinely must not be reachable, put it behind the tour's privacy controls, not behind a key.

Steps

  1. A key is just a short word you choose, like vault or red-door. There is no separate setting for secrets, doors or puzzles: one thing hands a key out, another thing asks for it, and every hidden mechanic in a tour is built from that pair.
  2. Three shapes come out of it. An easter egg is a hotspot that stays invisible until the visitor holds the right keys. A locked door or a maze is a scene link that stays shut until they do. A clue chain is a hotspot that grants a key when opened, which then opens a gate somewhere else entirely, in a different scene or in a hunt stop.
  3. Locked things are absent, not greyed out. A locked scene link renders no arrow at all, so there is nothing in the 360 view to click and nothing to tell a visitor they are missing something. A locked hotspot's marker is hidden outright. Both appear the moment the visitor picks up the last key they were missing, without the panorama reloading or the view jumping.
  4. Today you can set keys in exactly one place: on a hunt stop. Open a hunt from your destination's Hunts button, click Add a stop or Edit stop, and use Required keys (comma separated), which appears when How it opens is set to 'The visitor holds the right keys', and Grants this key when it opens, which is on every stop whatever kind it is.
  5. Keys on hotspots and on scene links are not editable from the studio yet. The tour viewer honours them, and a hunt's checks already expect them, but the hotspot editor and the scene link editor have no key fields, so easter eggs and locked doors cannot be switched on from the interface today. Only stop-to-stop chains can. Ask in a support thread before you plan a tour around the other two.
  6. Where a hotspot key does exist, the visitor keeps it. Finding it is recorded server-side, so reloading the page does not lose it, and the key is copied at the moment it is earned, so it survives you renaming or deleting that hotspot afterwards. Nobody halfway through a hunt loses progress to an edit made behind them.
  7. Keys are checked when a hunt is published. A stop that needs a key nothing can hand out is an error and blocks publishing, and the message names the key. A key counts as reachable if an EARLIER stop grants it, or if any hotspot anywhere in that destination grants it. That is why moving a stop up or down re-runs the checks: order is what makes a key obtainable.
  8. Visitors can see what they hold. The hunt page lists their keys under Keys, and a stop they cannot open yet tells them exactly what is missing rather than just refusing. Start over clears found hotspots as well as unlocked stops, so a second run through the hunt actually plays.
  9. Do not use keys as security. This is stated in the code rather than left to be discovered: key gating on links is deliberately not enforced on the server, because a hunt is a game and someone reading the page source can reach a locked scene anyway. That is an accepted outcome for a puzzle. Anything that genuinely must not be reachable belongs behind the destination's own privacy controls instead, not behind a key.