We created an Amazing Race game that could be executed with minimal manpower. For our group we had 24 participants and just 3 of us who planned, organised and facilitated the entire game. For some context, we organised this for our young adults group at church and we did this in Singapore which is a small country and has accessible public transport everywhere. For this kind of Amazing Race game, everyone will need a mobile phone with internet access throughout the whole game (in some cases, it’s enough for each team to just have one phone per team, your challenges / flow can be adjusted according to this).
This particular Amazing Race game we created is able to be facilitated by a few people because everything is communicated through mobile phones and there are no physical station masters. We had five teams, and each team had their own group chat (we did ours on the messaging app Telegram) with one of the facilitators in it. Two of us handled two group chats each and the last facilitator handled one group chat.
The game can be generally broken down into three parts:
Location clues: These clues / puzzles must be solved by the team for them to uncover the location that they need to travel to. We made sure that once they think they have the correct location, to confirm it with us first before traveling over.
Travel tasks: These are tasks they must complete while they are making their way from one location to another.
Location challenges: This is a challenge they must complete once they’ve reached the location.
We made it a rule that teams could only travel by foot or public transport. Here in Singapore, you can really take public transport anywhere, so it made sense for us to do it this way. However if you want to do closer locations you could impose a rule where everyone can only travel by foot, or if you have further locations you could get teams to drive (and perhaps navigate only with a physical map for example).
We had five locations for our game and we found that this was the perfect number based on the types of challenges we did and the travel time. Travel time between each ranged from about 10 mins to 40 mins. In total, we allocated five and a half hours; this was to include the briefing, though the actual game itself ended up taking only about 4 hours. To get a sense of how much time was needed to complete the game, we searched on Google Maps the travel time, and then roughly estimated how long they would take to solve clues and complete challenges.
Now that I’ve covered broadly how the game works, I’ll break down how we created the game.
Step One: Choose your locations
You can first decide generally if you want your locations closer together or further apart. I didn’t want our teams to have to travel too far so I chose locations that were located around the central area of Singapore. You can set a theme if you want, which may make it easier to choose locations (for e.g. food, places of worship, shopping etc.). We went without a theme, and I chose the locations based on my personal interest and what I thought may not be such an “obvious” choice so it wasn’t too easy to guess.
For reference I chose:
Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall (has a small museum inside)
City Square Mall (a regular mall, but it has an interesting historical landmark outside)
Parkview Square (a unique office building)
Cavenagh Bridge (there was a cute statue nearby that I wanted to incorporate into the game)
Jamae Chulia Mosque (a landmark near the finishing location)
The last location was based on where we would end for dinner.
Step Two: Come up with location challenges
Once you’ve decided on your locations, the next step is to come up with the challenges that teams will have to complete there. For the challenges, it’s good to keep in mind that the teams have to be able to complete them by themselves at the location and send the facilitators some sort of proof through the group chat. The challenges that we set for our different locations:
Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall - Teams have to go into the museum (free for Singapore citizens and residents) to find certain artefacts and answer some questions. This is the only location we (the organisers) visited, as we had to find what would be good questions / artefacts to find.
City Square Mall - Teams have to find the cheapest and most expensive item they can in the mall
Parkview Square - Teams must film a 10 second movie scene in a genre of their choice using the location as their setting
Cavenagh Bridge - Teams must find the sculpture by Fernando Botero nearby and take a creative group picture with it. The photo must include a stranger (extra points for each extra stranger they include)
Jamae Chulia Mosque - We included a photo we had taken previously from a nearby vantage point. The challenge here was to find the location and take a similar photo. We ended the game with an extra challenge of choosing a Tiktok trend of their choice and creating a video.
Step Three: Come up with location clues
Once you’ve got your challenges, then you’re good to come up with clues for the locations! I suggest doing step two before the clues because in the case you can’t come up with a challenge for the location you chose, you can always change to a different one. We did a mix of puzzles and word clues. Our first location clue was a crossword kind of puzzle, with the first letter of each answer forming the name of the location:
Location 1 clue
The second and fifth location clue was a word one. We did some research on the locations and found interesting yet slightly obscure facts that participants may not know about. They then have to do some research on their own in order to be led to the solution.
Location 2 clue
The third location clue was created in a similar way as the second one, but we used some images (flags in this case) for this instead to represent the embassies that were located in the office building.
The fourth location clue was a puzzle / image clue. We split an image into three to have the teams figure out what they should do with this. The aim was to get different people to hold their phones together with the different parts of the image and for another member to do a reverse image search. They would then be able to identify the person in the photo, which will lead them to ‘Cavenagh’ bridge which was named after this person.
Location 4 clue
Step Four: Come up with Travel Tasks
We added these travel tasks to the game so that teams had more chances to gain points as well as have something fun to do while they were making their way from one location to another. These can be as easy or elaborate as you want them to be, but consider their mode of transport as well as the travel time in order to decide the kind of tasks you set. These are the tasks that we set:
Write down everyone’s most unbelievable story
Find something that is each member’s favourite colour and take a photo with it
A math puzzle that gives a coordinate, they have to then take a screenshot on Google Maps
Scattergories
List down each of the members in the other teams
Some general things to know after creating your game challenges / tasks
When teams should send things through the group chats to the facilitators:
Once they’ve figured out the location clue, get them to confirm with your facilitators through the group chats before they depart. This ensures they’re not traveling unnecessarily
Once they get to the location, get them to send a photo of their team there before sending them the location challenge
Any challenges / tasks that require proof
We allocated one hint / lifeline per team that could be activated by messaging in the group chat
Various photos from the different teams for location challenges and proof of location
Scoring the game and deciding a winner:
We scored the teams based on the order they reached locations as well as how well they did in challenges and tasks. We then added up all the points then the team with the highest score won
We had 5 teams so we allocated these points to each team for order that they arrive and for most challenges / tasks: 20, 40, 60, 80 & 100
For example if a team reached first to a location, they would get 100 points. Second team would get 80 points and so on
For challenges and tasks that were more subjective for example ‘Send your most unbelievable story’, we got the facilitators to each give one of the fixed points (20 - 100) then added that up
For the game you create, this point system may not work, so you can adjust and create one that works for your situation!
Step Five: Creating game assets
The assets we created were:
Invite graphic - I created this in Procreate but Powerpoint and Google Slides are great software to create graphics
Briefing Powerpoint - Having a Powerpoint is a great, visual way to brief your teams on how the game works
Location clues / location challenges / travel tasks graphics - These are what the facilitators will be sending out to the different teams the group chat
Team bands - I created these in Adobe Illustrator, printed out the strips on A4 then cut them and used double sided tape on the day for the teams to wear
Facilitators Handbook - I created a handbook that had the entire flow of the game inside including each of the clues, challenges and tasks as well as their solutions. For each stage of the game there was also a table that made it easier for the facilitators to record down the scores
From left to right: Slide from the briefing powerpoint, wrist bands, page from the Facilitators Handbook
Step Six: Setting up the game and game day
Send out your invite graphics with details in advance of the game. It’s important to make sure you confirm numbers in advance of the game to give you time to plan the number of facilitators you’ll need, how many teams you have and how many players in each team
Once you know the numbers, you can plan how many team bands to create. We did a different colour for each team
Ensure the facilitators understand the flow of the game and give all of them the handbook and game graphics so they have it on their phone ready to send out.
Our facilitators used their phone to talk with their teams through the group chat and loaded our handbooks onto our iPads. Make sure you’re not using just one device as it will become hard to handle. If you don’t have an iPad or laptop to use the handbook / record the score, you can also print it out
For the creation of the group chat, we did it on the day itself but you can also create it beforehand to save time
Prepare prizes and certificates if you want too. These are good motivators!
Make sure facilitators have somewhere they can sit comfortable for the entire duration of the game
Let teams know to bring water, wear comfortable clothes and shoes and their public transport card if needed (as well as any other necessary items for your game)
On the game day, make sure that all teams arrive on time so that they have enough time to complete the game based on your time frame. You can try and load your briefing slides onto a larger screen or send them out to everyone as you go through it. It’s important to go through the flow of the game, when they should be sending things through the group chat and also give them an idea of what time they should be at the last location, as well as how many locations there are.
I hope this was helpful and gives you an idea for your next team building activity. Have fun creating your own Amazing Race game!