Coming up with great challenges for scavenger hunts
I find the variety of challenges you see in scavenger hunts to be highly entertaining. For university events, you’ll often see the boundaries get pushed a little bit. For other events like team building, pushing the boundaries isn’t as important as achieving company goals.
But despite the differences from hunt to hunt, there are certain formulas that a lot of the tasks follow. If you are struggling to come up with missions for your own scavenger hunt, play around with these 3 basic situations and see if you can come up with something interesting. My bet is you will.
Formula 1: Interactions with Strangers
Challenges where participants interact with strangers are one of the easiest but most effective options. You don’t want to make the interactions too crazy as these are random people, but something odd that only takes a few seconds makes a great challenge. When thinking of these quirky interactions, try mashing up activities that you would see in different locations (e.g. Yoga in a fast food restaurant with a stranger). The possibilities are truly endless, and you will often be amazed by a) how receptive random people are to help out and b) how good the participants are at approaching people during the game.
Some great examples:
- Piggy Back: Take a picture of a stranger giving you a piggy back. You must hold on for at least 5 seconds!
- RickRoll in Real Life: One of the weirdest internet trends to come along is the Rick Roll, where you play Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up when someone least expects it. Pull it off in real life by singing the song to some unsuspecting person karaoke style.
- Heart-Felt Proposal: Get down on one knee and let the whole world know that you love that stranger who just walked by. Take a pic!
While this may appear to be similar to formula one above, not involving a stranger does make a big difference. The trick is to create tasks that are either a) very bold (e.g. a flash mob with your team in a public square) or b) subtle but odd enough that people will do a double-take (e.g. fishing in a public fountain). When I’m thinking up these types of missions, I first think of a busy public place for the target and then figure out odd things I’d want to see there.
Some great examples:
- Here for the Show: Bring your own bag of popcorn into an electronics store and sit down to watch the movie!
- Mister Twister: Who needs an actual playing board for Twister? Bust out a spontaneous game in the middle of a public place!
- Hardcore Parkour: Think Parkour is just for an elite few? We beg to differ. Get out there and show off your best parkour skills.
Completing quirky challenges in public places is certainly fun, but it’s always important to mix in some more challenging tasks to take it to the next level. First, a quick disclaimer, don’t make people do something they will regret. Be smart. With that said, it’s amazing what people will do for a few points. Probably the biggest surprise we’ve had with GooseChase is the realization that people will do just about anything to win. When creating challenges, think of things you would have bet a friend to do for $20 when you were younger. It’s amazing how often these stupid ideas turn into great challenges.
Some great examples:
- Take a Dip: Jump into a body of water fully clothed and fully submerge yourself. Nice little cool-down right?
- Quick Trim: Shave something interesting into your’s or someone else’s chest hair. Outline your art in a marker.
- Nasty Concoction: Combine at least 3 very different beverages together and drink your concoction. The grosser the better.
These are only three types of challenges that make great content for a scavenger hunt. There’s obviously many more. We find that most people intuitively have a couple favourites they want to include. However, at some point, you run out of ideas. When that happens, try using these formulas to mix things up. We’ve had a lot of success with them and they work for a lot of different situations.
Happy scavenger hunting!
