If you aren't a person who has been stockpiling Russell Stover eggs like a squirrel before winter over the past month, then you may be surprised to find that Easter is this literal weekend. It's a little earlier this year than most — as EarthSky notes, Easter can only fall between March 22 and April 25, making this one an earlier one. So maybe it took you by surprise when you opened Snapchat today and wondered what the Easter eggs on Snap Maps are there for. Turns out if you forgot to schedule your own egg hunt this year, you're in luck: Snapchat is launching a Great Snapchat Egg Hunt on Snap Maps, which will surely keep your bushy bunny tail busy for the weekend.
The promotion starts on Friday and runs through Sunday, and is essentially a "Pokemon GO," but with significantly less whining about how on earth you just hatched another Rattata when you just ran into about 17 of them in a row today. According to Endgadget, Snapchat users in the U.S. and Canada can access the game by opening their neighborhood's Snap Maps, where there are already cute little augmented reality eggs hidden in specific spots for you to find. (Don't worry — Snapchat only put them in public locations like shopping malls and coffee shops, lest we have another "Dear god, why did you put this Pokemon Gym right outside my house?" incident repeat itself in 2018.)
Once you use Snap Maps to successfully track down an egg's location, you can tap it on your screen, which will in turn trigger the app to switch to a 3D World Lens that is reminiscent of the AR you're used to seeing in "Pokemon GO". Upon successfully finding an egg, you'll also get a point — or, if you're lucky enough to find a ~golden egg~, you'll get five points, explains Endgadget.
And what would a random egg hunt through your hometown be without a little friendly competition? If your friends aren't in Ghost Mode, you'll be able to see how many eggs and points they've collected on Snap Maps, and will also be able to access a Leaderboard to see who's kicking bunny butt. And just in case you want to feel really bad about your prospects, you can also access the global leaderboard and see who the reigning champ is there, too. Users who are concerned about privacy can hunt in Ghost Mode as well, without worrying about their fellow bunnies shaming them for how few eggs they've managed to collect.
The especially convenient thing about the hunt is that the locations of all the eggs are fixed, so they won't disappear on you the way, say, a Charizard in Central Park that you showed up five minutes too late to catch in the summer of 2016 (I'm OK, IT'S FINE, I'm over it). Each egg will also be collectible by anyone at any given time, so you can hunt with friends without worrying about one of you grabbing it first. Honestly, this seems like a far more peaceful way to do Easter egg hunts than the hunts of yore, where we all but tackled our friends to the ground to get some sweet, sweet jelly beans that were slightly damp from dirt and god knows what else.
According to Endgadget, the promotion will end on April 1 at 9PM PT/April 2 and 12AM ET — so what are you still doing reading this post, y'all? Open your app and start hunting. It's time to reclaim your childhood, one augmented reality egg at a time.
