What players said

"instant challenge" style physical challenges such as hiding the objects or building towers was a lot of fun

Games

My favorite part was the first puzzle in the Eastern Market Hall. That was super exciting and I wish more of the puzzle hunt was like that. The horse betting was my next favorite zone as the stables area was very funny.

My favorite part was probably the 7th zone's game of hiding an object. It was the most tactile & interactive game my team played, and we actually had to think and strategize to come up with a solution for hiding the objects.

In general, though, I really liked the in-person zones with a host involved, as that took the focus off the app and phone use and actually let us enjoy the event.

I also really liked the Guild format, as it kind of brought about a sense of identity and collectiveness with the other people in my guild, although we only ended up seeing 1 other group within our guild as we went about our district hunt.

-Vending machine!
-Puzzle-like activities like the first one and the hidden hand

Beginning all together in the Eastern Market building was fun, and a chance to interact with new folks. I could see this piece (starting at the same time, one day event) being good to continue, as a Stage 1 that is the easiest/most accessible part of the day.

The hiding the object puzzle

The recruitment hall and the hidden hand puzzles.

Walking around the neighborhood to find the games was great. It would also be nice if you could get more local stores or buildings involved like Labyrinth Games was. Having different locations host different parts is a great idea to help people get to know the area.

Learning more about the Eastern Market neighborhood. We had never been there before, and will definitely go back to explore the shops and sights more.

The technology issues were frustrating and some of the more screen oriented challenges (i.e. the dice or the word games) were not as engaging and I didn't enjoy having to check my phone every 4 minutes while I was walking around outside on a nice day. I wish there was less "screen time" and more physical activities.

Having to depend on the app so much

I felt like I spent most of the time walking to each zone then actually engaging with the puzzles. When I finally arrived at a zone, we would have technical issues. I honestly am okay with more pencil and paper activities versus an app. Even if I have to say goodbye to anything like horse betting. I would also like the area to be a little smaller.

I also did not really enjoy the guild aspect. That is mostly because I wasn't aware of the fact I should have been talking to my guild members about prioritizing tasks. I ignored all the messages because I wanted our team not to be spoiled by any solutions. I ended up feeling very guilty because I upset another person in my guild. In the future, please make it very clear I'm supposed to be working with other groups.

I was also a bit disappointed about how the end powers worked. I understand where you were going with for your message, but it doesn't change the fact that it still felt bad to go from winning to losing.

Technical difficulties were the main thing, but I think the fact that this year's district hunt relies heavily on technology and an app also amplified this issue. They caused most issues for the zones / minigames that involved having to type information into the app or somehow play the minigame through the app. I disliked those minigames in particular because of how reliant they were on the app; I personally prefer in-person activities, and having to constantly check our phones to place a new bet in horse racing or input a new word or draw a new die was very tedious.

On the other hand, games such as hiding the object, stacking the cards/chess pieces, and finding an object of a particular quality were more interesting to me. The haiku contest was probably one of the better non-hosted games, but I think it was a bit unfortunate that only 1 haiku from each guild made it into the final round.

This brings me to my next point: prioritizing individual vs guild performance. While overall, it was our guild's performance that decided the winners, seeing the individual teams on the leaderboard gives rise to an individual team performance aspect. While this may seem good to highlight teams that carried based on their individual performance, in cases where the whole guild's performance mattered, one individual group still took it upon themselves to do something for the guild, that team's performance does not really get spotlighted.

I say this because our team won the zone 7 position for our guild by completing the pineapple and pool noodle "hide the object" challenges, but we did not complete the briefcase challenge specifically because there was no point; all the other teams in our guild already attempted that challenge and scored the max of 12 points. So we focused our energy on scoring the 12 points for the other two objects (which we succeeded in), and we ended up getting our guild to first place in that zone. However, if you check the leaderboard, it says the highest team scored only 34 points, so it's only taking into account our individual performance, even though we could have done the briefcase and won that easily. Anyway, that was just a small rant, but it was a small grievance about our efforts. (The fact that storytellers reversed our rank for that zone at the end, even when we won for that zone, also made things a little more funny, but also it was unfortunate.)

Another thing I would critique is the king-of-the-hill style games where nothing matters but the last 1 hour / last round of the minigame. Even if people scored well in the previous rounds, those scores don't matter if they don't camp out the zone by the end of the district hunt. This is partly fueled by the fact that our team definitely scored the highest for one round (I believe we got 240 mm high? for stacking chess pieces), but due to tech issues, the score wasn't recorded, so you can't even see the score on the leaderboard. Additionally, our win does not even matter since only the final round for that zone matters in the end. While switching up the game depending on the time is fun, having nothing except the final round count is not the best strategy. I would say the zone where we had to find an object matching a specific description did the best at combining different time-based challenges with overall performance, so maybe using that for the other minigames could have been better.

I would also say the fact that everything is done from an app means that guilds can share codes amongst themselves, and while some teams may not have even set foot in the zone that the game is found in, they may have virtually set foot in the zone by entering a code that their guildmate gave them. It's not necessarily cheating, but it ruins the fun, in a way.

I think there were also quite a few games spread across the map that it was not enough time to fully enjoy all of them. I would prefer to have fewer games but longer games that are more interactive and more in-person than in an app. While I do like the use of an app to track progress and have live updates, I feel like centering the actual games around using the phone or app is not my favorite.

-Some activities felt random/pointless (tongue twisters, rolling dice), whereas others were more interesting and involved more strategy/thought
-Didn’t like activities that could be completed remotely (why bother to be in-person? sharing of the three-digit codes so teams wouldn’t have to actually go there is another issue that arose)
-Didn’t like having to refresh the virtual activities (we would often be multitasking/looking at our phones instead of enjoying the present)

The over-use of the app and lack of real puzzles really took away the magic of District Hunt for me.The app games, rather than being fun ciphers and paper-based puzzles, basically became equivalents of the same NYTimes phone games I play every day. In past years, our team would be spread out together on a sidewalk, looking at a mural and hand-solving a puzzle together. This year, having to put in new answers to 4 different re-occuring games meant that our whole team was on our phones, refreshing screens and just trying to keep up, for a large part of the day. I was texting to coordinate with another team more than I talked to my own friends, and by the end I felt pretty drained. The things I love about puzzles and hunts around the city all seemed to disappear this year, in favor of too much tech, games of chance, etc. I understand the app as a way to check answers and get the next clue/instruction, but putting actual gameplay there defeats the point of the event for me. I really missed the good, hard, creative puzzles that we could do manually this year.

the games that were pure luck like the dice game

The in-person tasks that changed throughout the game and the lack of available information about the other hidden hand powers and the order in which they would play out.

Being part of a larger guild was challenging. Communicating with them was hard and it was confusing to know whether our individual teams efforts even mattered. There were several games that my team decided to skip because another guild member had already done it and gotten a better score than we felt we could achieve. From what we could see only the best score for the guild would count for anything so it didn't make sense for us to try if we knew we could not beat what they had already gotten. If you do a team up like this again you should make it very clear that the individual team efforts matter for every game if you want participation. I'm a bit of a completionist so I would have tried all the games myself but getting my teams buy in was hard after they knew our score wouldn't matter to the greater game and we couldn't get the app to work.

I did not like having to go back to the the same areas over again. I much prefer a linear flow, where you solve one puzzle/aspect which leads to the next, and so on. I'm also not a fan of the guild scenario. I like working in person with my team. We spent too much time on the phone, trying to coordinate with other players, and I felt that was wasted time that could have been better spent solving puzzles.

My team was told we won one of the chess tower building challenges at the end of the hour but when I checked the site later, I saw no data or winners recorded during that hour because that was when the tech issues were occurring. That was a bummer! If you need a software engineer to help with tech for your next hunt, I'm down to volunteer - [email address removed]

I'm okay with AI use, but I'm not sure if you can continue to keep certain demographics engaged with the amount of AI use that was used in this puzzle hunt. Do you use AI to help with the puzzle design? You might want to disclose that because some people will not be okay with that.

Sorry, it seems like I have a lot of critiques, which I do, but I overall really liked this district hunt (it was my first time joining), and I will definitely be coming again for the next year. A lot of issues arose from the addition of the guilds and tech issues, but I think it has such good potential, and I overall really enjoyed myself and this game.

Re: my answer to last question - previous years that more directly connected to DC history and social service organizations gave the game a sense of place in a way this year didn't entirely do. I loved the year that included Street Sense physically printing the puzzles, and visiting businesses with tokens. Same goes for the book store year, where we found hidden physical objects. I learned a lot, visited parts of the city I hadn't been to before, etc. This year I was too busy keeping track of 10-minute game intervals and looking at my phone to even see where I was most of the time.

I feel like you could have leaned more into the ludology theme and described how games shape our culture

Great job! For the app, I'd suggest the ability to contact all team members simultaneously.

I'm sure you will hear this a lot but having the technology fail was a real challenge for my group. Not being able to enter the codes to unlock some of the games meant that my causal group lost interest more easily. It also felt like the last hour of the day was the only one that really counted toward anything and by that point my group was hungry and frustrated with the app not loaded so we went and got lunch. Maybe plan the day later so that people aren't skipping lunch or having to figure out the best time to fit it in.
Overall even with the technical difficulties it was a really fun day and I look forward to seeing more events like this happen.

This was a really fun event, even with the glitches in the app. It's a great opportunity to stretch your brain, get some fresh air, hang with friends and family, and see new places. I'm already looking forward to what you will have in store for us next year!