Urban Game

What it is

Teams set off from the same point with an app in hand and a list of missions. They cover the city for a few hours: places to find, photographs and videos to shoot inside the app, quizzes and puzzles to answer, challenges to get through, people to ask. Every mission is worth points, and the feedback arrives in real time. At the end everyone regroups, the points get added up and the best team gets the prize. You’ll also find it under the name city game: it’s the same activity.

We run it across the Gulf, through the historic districts of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and at resorts in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

When it makes sense to choose it

It works well when the group comes from different offices and doesn’t know each other: walking together for a few hours does more than a dinner. It’s particularly effective for teams that have drifted apart or have a communication gap, and for multicultural groups, where finding a shared way of talking is half the exercise. It works well too when you’re guests of a city for a convention and you want people to actually see it, instead of doing hotel-room-hotel.

It works less well if there are mobility difficulties in the group, or if the heat is a risk you can’t take: you’re outside, on foot, for hours.

The clues are never hidden under a plant pot. The answers come from looking, from thinking and above all from asking the people who live there. Anyone who gets their phone out to search loses the point of the challenge, and usually the points too.

How it actually works

Three moments. In the briefing the group splits into small teams, typically between five and fifteen people each, the mechanism gets explained, everyone gets into the app and receives the first mission. Then the missions across the city: from there each team moves on its own, choosing its own order and its own route, and can send messages or video updates to the other teams. Finally the leaderboard, with the points counted and the prize given.

The interesting part is the middle. The missions don’t all take the same time and some are worth more than others: the team has to decide what to let go. It’s a choice made while walking, with the clock running, and it separates the groups that organise themselves from the groups that chase.

And not every challenge should be taken literally. Some are written precisely so that anyone reading in a hurry falls for it. What the scoring rewards is creativity, clear thinking and working together, so a team that runs everywhere and agrees on nothing finishes behind one that walks. The day after, the group has a concrete picture of how it decides when nobody is chairing the meeting.

Four ways to run it

With remote support, the teams follow everything through the app and technical support stays reachable from a distance: it’s the lightest formula and the most economical.

With a supervisor, one of our people is on site and coordinates the group while the activity is running.

With a trainer for each sub-group, every team has its own dedicated guide, and the activity becomes far denser in interaction.

The fourth road changes the objective: in Urban Movie the teams don’t collect points, they shoot a short film through the streets with a professional facilitator.

Three questions

How long does it take?

Between two and three hours. Beyond that the walking gets tiring and the activity loses its rhythm.

Do you need to know the city?

No, and people who have never been don’t start at a disadvantage. The answers get asked for rather than remembered, so nerve counts for more than memory.

Can it be done in any city? And indoors?

Yes to both. The route is built on the city you choose: the places change, so the missions change, which is why it works well for conventions and incentives where the destination changes every year. And if you have a fine venue, a villa, a museum or your own corporate spaces, the same game runs inside with QR codes to find and scan. A smaller space makes the challenges tighter and puts them within everybody’s reach.