Scavenger Hunt Games - How to Create and Write Your Own For Your Next Party

Hello and welcome to my world.

I design downloadable scavenger hunt games, kids' games and murder mystery games. It's been my business, my career and my passion since 1983.

Now it's all fine and dandy that I sell these games but what if you want to create one yourself - just for your very special event?

Where do you start?

The answer is, "right here."

This a how-to guide for creative party planners like you who want to write and host your own personalized scavenger hunt.

If you want to create an unforgettable, personalized party your guests will be talking about for months to come then this is the guide for you. If you're bursting at the seams with great ideas but don't really know where to start, then this is indeed the guide for you.

I've already written an article on how to write your own murder mystery Now I'd like to tell you how I design my scavenger hunts. I hope you'll find my process inspiring enough to create your own. Of course, you can always buy one of my downloadable games as an alternative. I wouldn't say no to that.

Happy Hunting!

Susan Haley

Haley Productions' Scavenger Hunt Games

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Location, location, location!

2. Walk It

3. Draft It

4. Finalize It

5. Do it

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Step 1: Decide on your playing space. This is the most important consideration. Without it, you can't really start the design process. Do you want this to be a driving hunt or walking hunt? Will it take place in your neighborhood, your house and yard, a mall, an area with shops and businesses, a park? Make sure you have permission to hold your hunt at the location (if necessary); this is especially true for malls. There's usually a mall office you can contact.

Step 2: Walk (or drive) the location you've decided upon. Have a pad of paper and pen (or even a tape recorder) at the ready. As you walk/drive the location, look around. I mean really look around. Notice anything and everything. This is all about details. Whatever you see that you think may make a great location or item for a hunt challenge, write it down. This is sort of a stream of consciousness type exercise. An important note: Write down everything that you think of as you walk through the location – everything. Do not edit yourself. If possible take a camera with you to take pictures to help you as you put this hunt together later on.

When I walk my location I walk it with the intention that I'm going to be sending folks here to complete either photo challenges or to find things. It's amazing what you'll see when you really pay attention to your surroundings. Because I design my games so that they will work virtually anywhere in the world I keep my challenges very generic but you don't have to. For example, instead of having your teams look for a no parking sign (generic) have them go someplace very specific. Is there an interesting plaque on an old building that you never noticed before? What does it say? For example, the plaque commemorates the invention of the "flapjack flipper widget" by Booboo Balboa at this very location in 1802. Your photo challenge could then instruct the teams to "take a photo of your most creative team member where Booboo invented his flapjack flipper widget. To prove you were there, the plaque commemorating this momentous occasion must be in the photo".

To create a list of items for the teams to find, collect things yourself as you walk around: a business card from the accounting office, a weekly classified ads newspaper (perhaps you can have the teams search for a specific item for sale in that newspaper). I also flip through the dictionary for item ideas and I look through the yellow pages for business locations that could make great hunt challenges. If you know any business people who own local shops ask them if they would be willing to help you with your hunt. Ask them if you can send teams to them to collect a specific item from them (you can give them the item or perhaps they'll donate something.) Even if you DON'T know shopkeepers, it doesn't hurt to ask them for help. In my experience most folks are very willing to oblige. Obtain maps of your location if available or if necessary.

When you're done with this exercise, you'll have pages of notes, photos and items you've collected. This is the foundation on which to build your hunt.

Step 3: Your first draft. Using the way I design my hunts as a guide, you'll want to come up with the challenges next. For a 1 ½ to 2 hour walking (or 3 hour driving) hunt, I recommend about 15 photo challenges and 15-20 items to collect. The ultimate goal is to complete as many of the challenges as possible in the allotted time to get the most points and be the "winning" team. Here's a hint: people LOVE the photo challenges. I highly recommend they be part of your hunt. Go through your notes and come up with your favorite/most interesting locations: they will make up your photo challenges. Make a separate list of your favorite items to collect.

The items list is the easiest. You can give every item a point value (say 100 points) or you can divide the list into 2 groups: easy/fairly easy (100 point value) and difficult (500 point value). You can even make up a riddle for the teams to decipher to figure out what the item is. Because I'm so bad at riddles, I tend to search around www.riddles.com and other similar sites for ideas and inspiration.

Now onto creating the picture challenges which also must be given a point value (100 points for each challenge for example). When I design my picture challenges I break each down into 3 parts: who's in the photo, what are they doing and where are they. You could have the entire team doing something in the photo or you can select certain team members using various parameters. Examples: the most dramatic, the funniest, the craziest, the shortest, the tallest, the best dressed. You can combine them so that 2 or more people are in the shot or just use one person. I also personally think they need to be doing anything other than just standing there for all photo challenges – this is what makes the shot truly memorable. Examples: making a funny face, standing on one foot while saluting or bending over and looking at the camera through their legs. The last part of the challenge is selecting a location from your list. Again you can create a riddle for them to solve to find the location if you're good at that sort of thing. Voila, your picture challenge is complete. Move on through your location idea list to complete the rest.

One final note: Many people seem to think that a hunt must consist only of riddles wherein teams need to solve a riddle to get to a location and at that location they'll find the riddle for the location after that. In my experience, folks have a great time with my non-riddle hunts. If you want to design a location to location riddle hunt, you'll have to map out your specific locations and come up with some sort of cryptic clue to each location. Not an easy task but it hear tell it's been done with some success.

Now you have your first draft. Let it sit for a few hours or even a day the read through it. Is there anything else you want to add in to the hunt? Do you have an idea on how to customize it for a particular person like someone celebrating a birthday? Add it into the game. Remember, you're in draft stage so you should include anything and everything at this point. You can always scale back later. Show your draft to someone who won't be participating in the hunt to get their feedback (and maybe an idea or two). Clean up and edit the hunt as needed as you move into…

Part 4: The final product. Just 4 steps to the final product - not bad. Finalize the hunt now and make it look nice (add graphics, do a spell check, use a nice, easy to read font in a large size). It's now ready to be printed for each team.

Part 5: The planning and execution details. Plan your teams ahead of time. I recommend no more than 10 members per team (too many cooks…). As an option, ask your teams to come up with their own team name and to dress the part or co-ordinate outfits. The best dressed/named team can win a prize or bonus points.

Enlist good support – this is especially true the more teams you have or if you're doing your hunt for kids. I would strongly recommend that for every 2 or 3 teams, you have one helper. They'll help the teams during the hunt and will help you grade team efforts at its conclusion (it takes about 10 minutes per team). You'll want to also observe the teams during the hunt to help you evaluate your teams and their effort for the awards at the end – especially if you have a point tie between teams; the more enthusiastic, well-organized team should edge out a team who "got lucky" and was able to complete the hunt despite being highly disorganized for example.

Decide on the prizes or awards for your teams. You should have a prize for the best overall team who got the most points but you can always award smaller prizes to the other teams so they don't feel left out or like losers. Suggestions: gift certificates to your local coffee shop, movie theater passes or bookstore gift cards.

Buy/obtain Polaroid One Step cameras and film or digital cameras and any other supplies you need. Discount drug and department stores sell the cameras and film. You can also find them at Staples, Office Depot and Office Max (they'll be pricier there however). Here's a great online resource for getting the cameras (digital or Polaroid) and film inexpensively: www.ecamerafilms.com. Also, several of my customers have had wonderful success bidding for the cameras on EBay. You also need carry-all bags for each team for their hunt supplies and for their collected items and other small items like pens and a stapler to staple their photos to their team albums. (If you're using Polaroid One Step cameras I recommend creating a team photo album where they can staple each photo they take. It will help keep things organized. I buy those basic portfolio folders with the 3 embedded fasteners from an office supply store. Look up "Twin-Pocket Fastener Portfolios" at www.staples.com).

SPECIAL OFFER. Save time and money! Order and download a Do-It-Yourself Scavenger Hunt Game by Haley Productions now and save $5.00 off the $24.95 cost! To receive your $5.00 savings, please enter this special code when ordering on our secure shopping cart, www.mystery-hunt.com: hunt article.

Here's the link to my "How To Write Your Own Mystery Game" article: www.murder-mystery-game.com/write-murder-mystery-article.html.

Thanks for reading!

Susan

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Haley Productions' Scavenger Hunt Games