Damian Writes About Stuff

Continuing on the exploration theme from the last post I want to show off my San Francisco Scavenger Hunt game! I’ve always wanted to create a game of some sorts, and for around two years now I have been designing my very own “board game” (it’s a board game if you count the city as the board).

A bunch of the inspiration came from watching the series Jet Lag: The Game. If you are not familiar, it is a game show where the protagonists compete against each other in a travel/geography themed challenge. They change up the rules each season with some examples of past challenges being playing Connect 4 with US States, and using transit to play Tag Across Europe. Yearning to be able to play such a game with my friends and facing impracticality to replicate it at full scale, I set my sights on creating a more local version. 

One of the recurring game mechanics in Jet Lag that I wanted in my game was the deck of challenge cards. I liked the aesthetic of having a deck of cards even knowing it would be easier to do digitally, they were prominent in the Battle for America season. In the show, cards were specifically made for each region they played in, so I decided to make a deck of cards that were San Francisco themed. So this became an interest combining endeavor, with my other great passion: San Francisco Exploration.

So my thesis was to create a game that would be fun and be a good way to make my friends experience a bunch of my favorite places in the city. Like anything good in life, the first step in the game design process was creating a spreadsheet! I spent a while accumulating all the places, activities, and tasks that could be fun and interesting. During this research phase, I ended up buying over 10 SF History/Guide/Lore books and learned a ton of cool stuff, way more than made it into the game.

The basic rules of this version of game are as follows: 

• Teams of 2-3 people are given a deck of challenges and are tasked with completing them to earn points. 
• All the teams start at the same central location and are given the deck of cards, from which they draw 6 at random.
• Each card scores a different amount of points when completed, and you draw a new card each time to keep your hand at 6 cards.
• The cards are dispersed across the city so planning routes are limited to the cards you have in your hand at any given point.
• After a set amount of time, usually 5 hours,  teams return to the start location, and whoever scored the most points wins!

I playtested a few times on my own to get a sense of how hard individual challenges/ clues were, and how many could be reasonably completed in the allotted time. Then I assigned points to each based on a few factors: perceived difficulty, distance from the starting location (Mission-Dolores Park), and personal bias, since after all it was my game :). After iterating on which challenges to include, I settled on a final set before putting my graphic design hat on to make each into a card.

Game Time: 
So on June 1st, which marked the first day of my Funemployment, I held the Scavenger Hunt. Sixteams answered the call and assembled at Mission Dolores Park for the Noon start time. Coincidentally there was another scavenger hunt which also started at the park earlier in the day, scavenger hunts are so in this summer.

We assembled by the bottom of the park where I gave an intro and explained the rules. I passed the decks of cards out to each team, watched them draw their opening hands, and then set them loose. There were 2 teams cycling and 4 teams using public transit. I had one team drive during an earlier playtest but it was too hard to balance with the other modes of transit. 

I went back to Scavenger Hunt HQ (my apartment) to watch the game unfold. When a team completed a challenge I had them send back a picture or video, and the next card they drew. I spent my time verifying that teams completed challenges correctly and watched the map trying to guess where a team would go next. Occasionally I would give hints if I thought a team was straying too far and texted out some score updates. I think ~six teams was about the limit of what I could do on my own manually inputting data, so that’s an area of improvement to work on.

Here are some of my favorite cards that got completed:

Hitchcock’s SF: Vertigo scene Recreation

Vertigo has so many iconic scenes that take place all over the city so card has some flexibility.

Signature SF Fusion: Eat some Garlic Noodles

During one of the playtests there was a complaint that there wasn’t enough food cards lol. Ask and you shall receive, Garlic Noodles are an SF original so they had to be included.

Hunt Overall Results:

Points over time:

The first ~100 minutes were super close (except team 5) but then separation occurred with Teams 1/2 and Teams 3/4 being grouped. Team 6 made a big push towards the end but BART delays at the beginning really hurt them.

Top two teams:

It was a pretty tight race for first and second place the whole day, one was a bike team and one was transit based. They both completed the Swing card bonus giving them massive spikes but Team 2 had a one card lead at the end.

Rip team “I’m walking here” who had logistical issues lol:

Bike vs Transit:

During this play test it didn’t seem like there was too much of a difference between cycling and transit teams. Maybe there is a slight edge for bike teams but not a ton it seems. I think Transit teams have an advantage in planning since they can do research while on the move. For bike teams I think it’s more important that there are three people so that you can have one person watch the bikes while the other two complete the challenge.

Bike Route Strava from Team 4:

Final Thoughts:

I think that the event was a success and surpassed my expectations! Teams really went above and beyond and it’s really motivating to see. The players (my friends) said they had a fun time so I’m going to try and run more games this summer. I got some good feedback and looking forward a bit, I have some new ideas to keep it fresh. Cards also become invalid as time goes by, Cathenge in Hayes Valley was removed after I had sent the cards out for printed for example. I think the concept I want to go for for the next game comes again from watching Jet Lag, who in their latest season played a territory control based game in Australia. Now the gears are turning how I can adapt this for San Francisco. 

Lastly shout out to folks behind SF Pursuit who recently put on an amazing multi-week long scavenger hunt. I had a ton of fun doing it and it was motivating to make mine better.