Event Cache Games

I mentioned the Coffee, Coins, & Sigs events a couple posts ago, and it got me thinking again about event games. Games always seems to take the most work and most event for both planning and executing. For the Coffee, Coins & Sigs Fall 2007 event in August (yes, we pushed it forward to August to schedule around several other event, but still managed to conflict with a couple others) I put together a game we titled "Micro Mania." The concept was similar to many other event games where you search for the film canisters hidden throughout the venue, but our clues were photos of something near the container. The containers and photos were numbered and had to match and each container had three coffee beans. They were then shrink-wrapped and hidden the day of the event and photos captured and printed right on site using the cheap photo printers, my laptop with PhotoShop (basically to add the numbers), card reader, and my DSLR. My problem was keeping up with the stream of people arriving and wanting to play, but the game worked out well and all seemed to enjoy it. We eventually ended up re-hiding some of the containers and doing more photos since so many wanted to do another find. To win though you had to return the photo and matching container, still shrink wrapped, and inside had to be the green (raw) coffee beans. Like all event games it did take some time to administer, but it worked well for the open house style event as attendees could simply arrive as they wished, pick up a photo when ready, and play at their own pace without competing against one another. We'll be using this one at the next CC&S, but this time I'll pre-shoot and print the photos.