Bastille Day 2026 is Tuesday 14 July. Fireworks, closed quais, and a city centre where GPS gets unreliable.
In France people usually look for a chasse au trésor. In the UK they look for a treasure hunt. In Germany the word is Schnitzeljagd. The join problem is the same in all of them: phones people already have, more than one language, and a crowd that should not all land on the same corner.
Players open a browser. Instant Join QR or a short link. We use pyts.link so the address is not a PlayTours billboard. That helps a mairie, a CE, or a company with offices in Lyon and Dublin. Staff should not have to install a store app on a work phone IT has locked.
Free plan: 25 concurrent devices, watermark on screen. Paid removes the mark. Same builder either way.
If your 14 juillet gathering is a public fête, read 800 guests, 120 phones before you buy a plan for everyone who might walk past.
The builder has allowTranslation and defaultLanguage. Write the source chapter in the language most of your players will think in. Let the rest translate in the player rather than shipping two hunts you will not maintain.
Write the main copy carefully. Auto-translate will mangle a riddle. Keep the riddle in one language. Logistics such as “meet at the statue, fireworks at 23:00” can sit in both if you need them to.
We have a multi-language guide. The short version: pick a default, and keep the briefing in one voice.
Paris on the 14th is a Prevent bunching problem. So is any European capital on its national day.
Shuffle chapters. Pin a first chapter (safety, meeting point) and a last chapter (where to watch the display). Shuffle the middle.
Prevent bunching assigns the least crowded next chapter when a team finishes. That is how you avoid a flash mob at one plaque.
Access codes on tasks: print a QR, tape it at waist height on a partner café or a town-hall noticeboard. Players scan or type the code. This beats a GPS radius when the street is shoulder to shoulder.
Write out-of-bounds into the chapter briefing so nobody is sent across a police cordon.
GPS check-ins struggle when the street is a canyon of buildings. Prefer:
Skip object-recognition on a moving crowd unless the object is huge and unique. A lamp post is not unique.
Not every 14 juillet hunt is civic. A lot of European mail is “the office is open, we have 40 people, we want 75 minutes before dinner.”
Free roam: set complete challenges in order to off. Put six tasks in the neighbourhood of the office. Time limit on the session. Remember the timer cannot be paused. If the restaurant seating moves, stop the session from the facilitator dashboard.
Facilitator-to-team messaging helps when a street closes. Type “skip the river task, go to chapter 3.”
Swap the flag and the legal note. Keep the join and the crowd controls.
PlayTours is ISO 27001 certified. We host on Google’s Japan region, which is covered under the EU-Japan adequacy decision. If your DPO needs the policy, it is on the site: privacy and security.
IT-locked phones are a separate article: the scavenger hunt IT actually approved.
QuickBuild will give you a 4 to 8 task draft from a prompt in French or English. Then open the full editor. Add Instant Join QR. Turn on shuffle and prevent bunching. Put a time lock on anything that collides with the fireworks.
Email hello@playtours.app if your prefecture has a rule we should know about. A map helps more than a long brief.
Email us at hello@playtours.app
