Animals on the Edge

This treasure hunt was designed as an activity to entertain and promote communication between teams of playerstaking part in Design Challenge 2004, sponsored by DfES and Nesta Futurelab, organised by Gamelab London.

Who took part?
Nine Design Teams from around England. Each team included multimedia developers, teachers and students. The route was around the Thames between Charing Cross and London Bridge.

Kit: Clue map, street map, mobile phone, polaroid camera, answer sheet to fill in.

The map showed where to locate clues along the Thames. Teams texted requests for specific clues when they were in the appropriate location and received SMS responses. They then texted back SMS answers to collect points. They could check their score and the highest score at any time.

They had to collect specific polaroid photographs in zones along the route.  There were five actors on location:  a lion tamer at Trafalgar Square, a fisherman on Festival Pier, an escaped convict at London Bridge, a cook at Monument and a friar at Blackfrars.

There were also broadcast messages during the game, giving extra bonus questions and tasks along the route, and directing players to their final destination.

Players' final destination was warm and dry with catering facilities. They had an opportunity to give feedback and create a poster showing all the photographs they had taken during the game. Teams got extra points for taking pictures of live animals - a brief that was interpreted with imagination...