How to set up a digital scavenger hunt

If you’re organizing an event or activity soon, a digital scavenger hunt could be the perfect solution for setting up! The same as with regular scavenger hunt games, the goal of them is simple: teams have a list of items or tasks to accomplish to win. However, as the name implies, digital scavenger hunts utilize technology to make the gameplay even more exciting. Of course, for the most part, the action remains in the real world, but the player’s smartphones are used for giving out all the game instructions.

People sometimes decide against the digital option because they are afraid that it will take too much effort to create one, but that’s far from the truth, especially given the availability of solutions that offer the option to create a game based on ready-made templates. So, to give you an introduction before you start creating your first game, let’s take a look at how to create a digital scavenger hunt quickly and easily.

What is a Digital Scavenger Hunt?

Today, platforms like Loquiz are allowing you to create your own digital scavenger hunt and run it on IOS/Android mobile devices. Compared to the classic pen-and-paper games, digital scavenger hunts offer many solutions that can make the game a lot more interesting, for example:

• Adding photos and videos
• Implementing GPS location tracking into the game
• Adding music and audio files to the game
• Set up various interactions that have an impact on the game.

How digital they are played ? :

Digital scavenger hunt games are usually played outdoors and are suitable for adults and children alike. For students, it’s a popular activity on field days and during Christmas, Easter and various other holidays. Meanwhile, the most common type of digital scavenger hunt for adults are city tours, in which the tasks are created with the intention for players to discover new places or take part in various silly challenges at well-known landmarks. It’s also popular to create a digital scavenger hunt game around someone’s birthday, bachelor/ette party, wedding, or any other special occasion, with the tasks set up around the person or event. 

There are various digital scavenger hunt ideas that you could put to use in your game, such as: 

• Find all the items (or do as many tasks as you can) before the time runs out
• Find more items (or complete more tasks) within a previously set number of challenges
• You can also invent special rules such as stealing the other team’s points
• Or make the teams negotiate with each other to achieve their objectives.

How to create your own digital scavenger hunt on Loquiz

Loquiz is a nice solution to build a scavenger hunt, with pre-existing templates for both indoor and outdoor games. The two best templates for this purpose are Gem Paris Tour and the Photo Scavenger Hunt. Let’s take a closer look at both of them.

1. Gem Paris Tour:

1. Gem Paris Tour is a scavenger tour game in which the players will be able to see different parts of the most visited capital in the world – Paris – by unlocking and solving the 21 hidden “gems”. While answering the questions, players earn points and compete for a higher position on the leaderboard. With this template you will be able to:

• Adapt it for any other city to make a scavenger hunt around it 
• Personalize the pins on the map as you wish
• Add pictures and audio for further immersion.

2. Photo Scavenger Hunt:

2. The idea of Photo Scavenger Hunt is that teams move around the location of the game while taking creative photos of various items to cross them off their digital scavenger hunt list. The aim is to take the best pictures of the objects listed in the game and to answer the questions attached to them. With this template, you can create a scavenger hunt game in which you will be able to:

• Play a scavenger hunt game with people remotely
• Add some fancy features like AR tasks
• Add all the creative questions you have in mind.

As you can see, creating a digital scavenger hunt isn’t that hard. However, it will still require your input to adapt the game for your players and make it exciting for them. Therefore, when you create your own electronic scavenger hunt, don’t forget to:

• Use your creativity for the audio and illustrations you add to the game
• Find funny tasks to accomplish and questions to answer
• Create rules that match the players’ expectations and abilities
• Test the game in the advance to see if the scavenger hunt is working as you intended
• Have fun!

If you’re interested in trying out the Loquiz platform to bring your digital scavenger hunt ideas to life, contact us to ask for a demo!