It's Thursday 4 February. HR opens the editor for the first time to build the CNY hunt for tomorrow. The colleague who was going to check the Chinese left for Ipoh on Tuesday. The AI draft has written a couplet that doesn't exist, sent team one to a mall that will be shuttered, and asked for a photo of "your red packet money." Eleven people are already on leave. It's going to be a long afternoon.
Lunar New Year 2027 falls on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 February. In Singapore, Monday 8 February is the public holiday in lieu, and Malaysia gazettes the same moon. The problem with a CNY hunt is never the tasks; it's the calendar. If you start designing in the last week of January, half your players are already on a bus home and the CBD has gone quiet. Build in the week of 12 January while people are still around. Then run a short office version on Friday 5 February, a campus version the week before, or a neighbourhood version over the holiday for people who stayed.
Here's what the Friday looks like if you did. Someone built the game three weeks ago in a web editor: six indoor tasks across a couple of chapters, a puzzle or two, a photo, one check-off. At 11:00 the join QR goes on a slide, people scan it, a web page opens, they type a team name, and they're playing. Nothing gets installed. You watch a dashboard, end the game at 11:45, and download the results if L&D wanted one. Up to 25 phones at once is free, with a small watermark; paid plans raise that number and change nothing else. That's PlayTours. The company Friday is the real spike, with everyone joining at once, so size for that.
Tasks that know what day it is
The CBD and industrial parks empty out over the holiday, while heartlands and some malls get louder. A location task pointed at a locked office tower will fail. Every task can be given a date range, so anything that assumes a shop is open on 6 to 8 February can be set to hide on those days unless you've checked. Indoor tasks in an office that's still open on 5 February, or codes at a community club you've booked, will work.
This is reunion week: closed shops, and red packets as a motif rather than a demand for real money.
Photos that are always optional, puzzles that aren't
Photo tasks suit decorations, a lo hei table you were invited to, a reunion spread. PlayTours checks each photo against your instruction. Mark every family-related photo task optional, because not everyone celebrates and not everyone wants their family on a company gallery. If you use the shared gallery, say so in the briefing so consent is clear.
The desk tasks carry the hunt. A combination-lock task (a playful code, not a real PIN), a word search of festive words, and a matching-pairs task from animal sign to year all work without anyone leaving their chair. Add a check-off like "call a relative you haven't spoken to this year," also optional.
Write the Chinese properly or not at all
You can set the language you write in and switch on translation, so a colleague reads the tasks in English or Chinese with one tap. That works for logistics. It isn't a substitute for a native pass on couplets and festive wordplay, and QuickBuild will invent characters. Have a colleague who celebrates CNY read the draft before they leave for Ipoh. If nobody's available, drop the couplets and keep the logistics. I'm happy to read one at hello@playtours.app.
The Friday, and the January checklist
On Friday 5 February people are mentally gone. Forty-five minutes, six indoor tasks, join QR on a slide. Then let them leave. Nobody needs to be last on the last Friday, so switch the leaderboard to its friendly mode, which hides the exact bottom of the ranking. Campus: run it before students vanish, with QR codes on halls that stay open, and leave out "find an ang pao on the ground" unless you want a litter problem.
The checklist: create the game in the week of 12 January and name it "CNY 2027" so you don't open a leftover. Print the join QR before 23 January; someone will be on leave after that. Set date ranges on any mall task. Mark every family-photo task optional. Test a submit on 4 February from a phone on cellular in the actual pantry. Afterwards, download the results if L&D wanted a culture-week artefact. Then leave people alone.
Gong xi fa cai.
-Mo
If you're building this in PlayTours
Time-restricted tasks with date ranges; AI-judged photo tasks marked skippable; Image share with consent in the briefing; combination-lock, word-search, and matching-pairs tasks; Default language and Allow translation; the friendly leaderboard; hide a pantry QR after completion if you have one box of decorations and twelve teams. QuickBuild prompt: "Chinese New Year office hunt, six tasks, bilingual placeholders, no real money, no locked malls, indoor, 5 February." It will invent couplets, send people to Chinatown on day one, and ask for a photo of cash. Delete those three.