NEWS

February 2023 GOTM Winners

This month, we’ve had fun working in different forms of love into some of our releases. With the Tunnel of Hugz, we transformed a typically romantic ride into one that was more friendship-focused. Our special duo Mech set, Y1N and Y4NG, highlighted the importance of balance in partnerships. Our limited-time credits, the HeartBeatz, brought a focus on self-care through exercise.

Towards the middle of the month, we went back to more traditional Valentine’s Day-themed releases, with a ZEE-Dayz featuring Jewels and Virtual Colors, new Greeting Cards, and new Charm Bracelet specials to collect.

Lastly, we’ve been posting quite frequently about upcoming Munzee Events — things are looking up, and we’re excited to do more attending and hosting, or at the very least, help spread the word about events y’all are putting on! Rob and Lou hosted an event in Prague just this past weekend, we have Munzee Madness to look forward to in March, and we are also excited about the Osaka Castle Summer Bash in July!

We are now happy to announce the winners of the February Gardens of the Month (GOTM)! The badges will be awarded by early March, but we couldn’t wait to share the winners we’ve chosen!

February GOTM

As promised, we’ve chosen 4 winners this month! Remember that all winning GOTM organizers and all players who deployed in the winning gardens will be awarded special badges for their contribution to growing the map. This month we’re happy to award the HeartBeatz Virtual Garden, designed by Waves117, the Wine O’Clock garden, designed by GoodLifeZombie, the Shire Horse Sanctuary garden, also designed by Waves117, and the Scooter garden, designed by biggoalie31, as our winning February GOTM! The gardens appear as follows:

HeartBeatz Virtual Garden by Waves117 in Glemsford, Suffolk, England

Waves117 included a variety of virtual types in this garden’s design — the simple Virtual Color for the heart, Void Mysteries for the rhythm line, and Electric Mysteries, Night Vision Googles, Onyxes, and Crossbows for the headphones.

Here’s a note from a player who designed this garden:

The garden was designed for our very hard working paramedic clan mate BigBadJohn1402 who has organised a Munzee Event in July. Due to working long hours, his time is very limited so the clan are designing gardens for his event. My garden has a medical theme based on his role of a paramedic and features a heart with the heart rhythm line. With Valentines day mid February it only seemed appropriate to launch the 500+ pin garden in January with a view to it being fully deployed by 14th February, which it is. When the HeartBeatz new limited time credits were announced by MHQ I just had to include the earphones to enhance the original design. So all in all a very topical Virtual garden.

This is exactly why we love hearing the story behind garden designs! It was interesting to find out that Waves117’s original design was just the heart with the rhythm line on its own — it definitely highlights BigBadJohn1402’s important work as a paramedic, and then adding the headphones to transform it into the HeartBeatz credit adds another layer of meaning.

We hope that if you’re reading this, you’ll consider attending BigBadJohn1402’s event in the summer!

Wine O’Clock by GoodLifeZombie in Aranda de Duero, Spain

To outline, or not to outline? In this case, it was a smart decision since the wine glass may have blended into the map too well without it. We also think the different Virtual Colors were cleverly chosen and placed to add a shading effect, creating depth.

Here’s a note from the player who designed this garden:

Aranda de Duero is a small Spanish town, known for its historical heritage, kilometric underground wine cellars interconnecting below the streets of the town centre, and its excellent gastronomy, based around its local speciality, “lechazo” (roast baby lamb).

“Ribera del Duero” is an internationally acclaimed wine which is been brewed and stored in Aranda since the XII century, and a must try upon visit!

And also a note from a different player who nominated this garden:

This garden represents 3 things I think are important (even if the design is unrelated).
1: Clan Comradery. It’s been a team effort for quite some time, and while of course many players helped, The Pirates Return worked really well trading around to get it complete.
2: Growing the Map. There are other deploys in Spain, but in general it doesn’t seem ‘kept up’ as much as it could be!
3: Munzee Spirit. The owner of this garden has more of it than any player I’ve interacted with. Sociable, helpful to anyone needing trades or advice, engaged with many branches of the game (rovers, coins, badges, etc.) Ultimately, I just think he should win.

After reading those notes, we think we know why GoodLifeZombie is living the good life — Aranda de Duero sounds like the kind of place we’d love to go to on vacation! If you enjoy fine dining and want to visit somewhere new, this place has the added benefit of being home to a wonderful fellow Munzee player!

Shire Horse Sanctuary by Waves117 in West Runton, Norfolk, England

This horse has a twinkle in its eye and moistness in its nostrils from Virtual Onyxes!

Here’s a note from the player who designed this garden:

The Village of West Runton was a Munzee sparse location close to a nearby munzee event planned for October. The Village is home to the Hillside Shire Horse Sanctuary which cares for rescued Horses as well as other animals. This is where the idea of the horse head came from for the virtual garden I have also deployed an urban fit route to follow to hand cap part of the garden which aids the munzee development of the area.

While there have been many unicorn-inspired gardens, it was rare for us to see the humbler horse featured in a garden’s design. The red bridle cinched the deal as it matched the other winners we chose this month!

Scooter by biggoalie31 in Warren, PA

We’re always impressed by the level of detail garden designers have been able to achieve, especially when the garden has less “pixels”. You can tell that this garden is a scooter from a mile away!

Here’s a note from the player who designed this garden:

The POI is part of the design. It’s part of the front turn signal. I ride my scooter around town to get Munzees. Munzee is a reason to ride. Riding is a reason to Munzee.

Rounding out our GOTM picks is this striking red scooter! biggoalie31’s short and sweet note gives us the impression that they have reached a Zen-like state, achieved by successfully combining hobbies. Like the previous garden, we felt it matched well with the other winners, and is also a mode of transportation!

All players who deployed in the respective winning gardens will receive the following special badges:

Rules for GOTM nominations:

1. Garden must feature non-licensed character designs.
2. The garden must feature a Garden Places Pin.
3. The garden must be built using a publicly available spreadsheet which we will ask to be locked after being 100% deployed.
4. We’re asking for ongoing nominations and we will release the winners throughout the year.

Based on your feedback, we’ve created a Google Form where you can submit GOTM nominations — here’s the link: https://forms.gle/SjUQeRxdi5FT81pCA

We’ll still check the iloveyou@munzee.com inbox for stragglers, but please try to send your submissions to this new Google Form instead. Keep in mind that we take all former nominations into consideration for upcoming months. Just be sure your garden follows the nomination rules in order to be considered eligible!

If you need help deploying in a Virtual Garden, you can check out this step-by-step tutorial that will making deploying in a garden easy no matter how long you’ve been playing. To fill in the gardens, make sure to stock up on Virtuals and Color Credits from the Freeze Tag Online Store.

Munzee on!

P.S. Are you looking for POTM requirements? Remember that in 2020, we announced that we were holding off on POTM for now as we develop a new way to highlight our unique player base!