In late July 2016, the Ghost Patrol folks (teams LowKey and Desert Taxi) ran Ghost Patrol: Late Night Snack, an afternoon game in Walnut Creek. This game had some cool puzzles, some great production values, and the first good integration of augmented reality I've seen in a puzzle hunt. (Back when we were planning the Hill Hunt Game, the excellent ClueKeeper folks had told us about this upcoming feature. We hadn't figured out a good way to integrate it into a hunt. The Ghost Patrol folks did! It helped that their games have a spooky theme.)
The first weekend, I played with team Mystic Fish. The second weekend, I site-monitor-volunteered with GC.
Team Mystic Fish consisted of
It was really hot! I brought along two big water bottles. I guzzled their contents, refilled, and repeated a few times over the course of the afternoon. When playing these neighborhood games: there's usually a dilemma. If you get a clue near a cafe with comfy tables, you want to order a beverage/snack to "rent" a table lest you be one of those people who get the game uninvited for the second weekend. But by the third cafe, you're thinking I am so full of coffee and little cakes that I can't stand to ingest anymore. This game, that was not a problem for me. I'm not sure how many glasses of iced tea I drank that day; I could have easily downed more. There were a couple of times when I had to stop working on a puzzle just so I could go sit down, drink more, and not pass out. This didn't always happen at opportune times. Once, I'd said "Oh, I'm seeing a message!," started to spell out that message…and then abruptly had to go sit down and drink yet more iced tea, unable to to muster enough neurons to continue my sentence. (Fortunately, my clever teammates figured it out.)
The bestest photo was taken by someone on GC (Jen? Jesse?)
as we manipulated popsicle sticks at Alma Park:
I had so much fun the first weekend that I volunteered to site-monitor on the second. (Plus I was pretty sure it wouldn't be so hot again.) I hung out at Grower's Square with excellent other GC volunteer Sandra, handing out the excellent "pills puzzle".
After the last team picked up their puzzle at Growers Square (and then hied off for somewhere else), I took some photos of teams doing the runaround/ghost capture video until I dropped my camera on the ground, doing no permanent damage (yay!) but somehow draining the battery (?or convincing it that the battery was drained or something?). Anyhow:
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