Someone is standing in front of a desk that was theirs in July. It now belongs to a team that was reorganised into existence on 18 August, while they were on a beach with no signal. They don't know the door code to the new floor. They're not sure who to ask, because the person they'd ask is still in Portugal until Thursday.
That's the first week of September in a French, German, Dutch, or British office. Half of Europe disappeared in August and the rentrée is people remembering door codes and working out who sits where. Stay indoors. Save the countryside walk for a week when people have energy.
Here's what the ninety minutes look like. Someone in HR spends an evening in a web editor writing six tasks: a few check-offs, one photo, one quiz question, one QR on the new printer. On the first all-hands slide there's a QR code; staff point their phone at it, a web page opens, they type a team name, and they're in. Nothing gets installed, so work phones join without an IT ticket. Between calls, people do three of the six tasks and feel done. You watch a dashboard and end the game before the town hall. Up to 25 phones at once is free, with a small watermark; forty staff joining together needs the next plan up, so see pricing. That's PlayTours. The IT post has the ISO 27001 and Japan-hosting answers that come up in Frankfurt and Paris.
Let people drift in and out
Most hunts make teams complete chapters in order. For rentrée week, switch that off. Everyone will get pulled into Slack at some point, so let them open the game, do what they can between calls, and still finish.
The best tasks for this are the simplest kind. A check-off task shows one line of text and a button: "Find the person whose out-of-office was the funniest. Mark complete when you've said hello." No photo, no answer to type, just a reason to walk over. Mix in one photo task (the new plant nobody has watered) and one multiple-choice about the product that shipped in August. If everyone gets the quiz wrong, that's useful information, so keep its points off the leaderboard.
Leave the live team-location map off. Works councils in Germany and France will ask about it, and you don't need to know where people are in an office you can see across.
Six tasks I'd actually ship
- Check-off: the person whose handover doc was three lines
- Photo: the mug wall, now that the dishwasher has moved
- Multiple choice: which product shipped in August, with the answer from the launch email
- QR code: the new printer on floor three, if it exists
- Written answer: one process to kill this quarter, points hidden from the leaderboard
- Check-off: introduce two people who have never been on the same call
If there was no launch email, drop task three. Six is plenty; if a draft gives you eight, cut two.
The timer, the all-hands, and the works council
Set a 60- or 90-minute time limit. The countdown can't be paused, so if the town hall slips, end the game from the dashboard, and put that instruction in the facilitator's calendar invite. Put the join QR on the first all-hands slide.
Set the language you're writing in to French or German if that's the office language, and switch on translation for everyone else. Avoid jokey idioms that translate badly.
On GDPR: live location off, photos of faces optional and say so, and download the results afterwards to keep under your own HR retention policy. If a company phone blocks the camera, turn the photo tasks into check-off tasks, and test one managed device before the all-hands.
If your works council has a written rule we should see, email it to me at hello@playtours.app. A PDF helps.
-Mo
If you're building this in PlayTours
Switch off "complete challenges in order." Use no-answer tasks for the check-offs, one AI-judged photo, one multiple-choice, one QR task, and a judged-text task with "do not add points to leaderboard" ticked. Default language French or German with Allow translation on. Session time limit 60 or 90 minutes. Live team location off. QuickBuild prompt: "Office hunt, first week after summer holiday, six tasks, indoor, no GPS, mix of check-off and photo tasks, dry tone rather than cute."