Tile Hunting for Walkers: No Bike, No Watch, No Problem

Photo by Mad Rabbit Tattoo on Unsplash

Tile hunting was made for bikes

How much would you pay for a medicine that cut your risk of dying early almost in half? A hundred euros a month, maybe a thousand? You can have it for free, and you take it by walking. We’ll get to the research further down, but first a small confession: Wandrio started on a bike ride, which is a slightly awkward origin for a post about walking.

Tile hunting was invented by cyclists. Riders went out of their way to ride odd roads just to colour in more squares on a map, and VeloViewer, Statshunters and later Squadrats turned the habit into a hobby with players all over the world. Those tools were built with riders in mind. When we started Wandrio, we wanted a version for everyone else, whether or not they own a bike. If you have a phone and a pair of shoes, you have everything you need.

Walking has gone mainstream

In its 2025 Year in Sport report, Strava found that walking had become the second most recorded activity on the platform, and that it had overtaken cycling for the first time. People now log their walks as proper workouts, where a few years ago a walk was mostly the bit between the car and the office. Walking has also become something people do together: new clubs on Strava almost quadrupled in 2025, and hiking clubs grew fastest, nearly six times over.

A walk to a place you haven’t been before is the kind of walk the game is built around, so more people walking is good news for us and, we’d argue, for the people doing the walking.

Do I really need 10,000 steps?

No, and this is where the medicine from the start of the post comes in. A 2025 review in The Lancet Public Health pooled 57 studies that had measured people’s daily steps with devices. People who walked about 7,000 steps a day had a 47% lower risk of early death than people who walked 2,000, along with lower risks of heart disease, dementia and depressive symptoms. Even going from 2,000 to 4,000 steps made a clear difference.

So a little more walking goes a long way, and you don’t have to turn into an athlete to get the benefit. For most of us the hard part is getting out of the door in the first place. A step count on a screen is a weak reason to put your shoes on when it’s raining, while an unexplored tile two streets away gives you a concrete place to go.

The kit list: one phone

Wandrio records your route with your phone’s GPS, so the sports watch and the heart rate strap can stay in the drawer. Getting started takes three steps:

Download Wandrio from Google Play or the App Store.
Press Record when you leave home.
Walk into a square you haven’t visited. When you get home, stop the recording, choose the activity and save.

When you save, the new tiles appear on your map next to all the squares you haven’t visited yet. Seeing those empty squares makes it easy to plan the next walk. If you already use Strava or Garmin, you can connect your account and import your whole activity history in one go. Plenty of new players find out they already own dozens of tiles before their first walk with the app.

Walkers reach the awkward tiles

Cyclists cover more ground, but there are plenty of places a bike won’t take you: swamps, stairs, park trails, the shortcut behind the shopping centre. On foot those tiles are “easy” to pick up. Walking pace also gives you time to notice things, like the café you’ve driven past a hundred times without seeing it, or a path that joins two neighbourhoods you assumed were miles apart.

Walking counts exactly the same as any other way of moving. Tiles can’t be collected by car or any other motor vehicle, but walking, running, cycling, skiing, kick-sledding, swimming and paddling all count, and walkers play on the same map and leaderboards as everyone else. It works in November too. When it’s dark here in Finland by mid-afternoon, a ten-minute evening walk to a new tile is a good reason to get outside.

A walk in the woods is good for your head

The research backs up what most of us already feel. In one brain imaging study, an hour’s walk in nature lowered activity in brain regions that process stress, while an hour’s walk in the city didn’t have the same effect. A systematic review of nature walking studies found that these walks can lift mood and well-being.

Tile hunting tends to drag you into nature whether you planned it or not. The easy squares around your home go first, and after that the next ones are usually at the edge of a forest, along a shoreline or somewhere deep in a park you didn’t know was there. One of our players told us Wandrio got them wandering through forests again and enjoying exercise.

Tile tactics for lazy people

Change your everyday routes. Walking to the shop down a different street gets you the same groceries and a new tile.
Walk along the edge of your map. Open the app before you head out and plan a loop around the border of the area you’ve already collected.
Walk when you travel. An afternoon on foot in a new city can easily be worth dozens of tiles, and you’ll see more of the place than you would from a taxi.
Bring the dog. It needs a walk anyway, so you might as well head somewhere new.
Look after your home turf. Visit your local tiles often enough and you can become their Mayor or Legend.

Better with friends

With the Friends feature you can follow each other’s progress and plan walks together, and with Teams your group gets one shared map that every member’s walks add to. Rope in the neighbours, your colleagues or your sports club. Then set a shared target, say 100 new tiles before Christmas, and follow your progress together on the shared map.

Collecting Wandrio-tiles by walking is trending in Finland

Wandrio was born global, but the founders live in Finland. And the finnish people love Wandrio, and especially collecting tiles while walking. Here are five videos from Finnish youtubers, who have gotten addicted to Wandrio. You can practice your finnish language skills by watching these videos:

So, should you try it?

Yes. Download Wandrio, press Record and walk one block in a direction you never normally go, and you’re a tile hunter.

If you’d like a bit more help, our 5-minute beginner’s guide covers the basics, and the Global Tile Map shows all the unexplored tiles near you. Some of them have been waiting a very long time.