Setting Up Your Map

Our goal, when designing Hide and Seek, was to make a game that can be played almost anywhere in the world. In order to accomplish this, we established a few simple steps that should generate a viable game map wherever you choose to play. Here’s how to set the parameters of your game:

Choosing a Transit System

Your local transit system is the backbone of Hide and Seek. While this game can be played with cars or on foot, as we will detail later, we strongly recommend using public transit for this game. Hide and Seek can be played on trains, trams, metros, light rails, buses, ferries, or any other form of public transit, but you’ll need to define which systems are in play before starting your game. Given that each hiding zone will be centered around a transit station, it’s crucial that your game includes a sufficient number of stations to keep it engaging and open-ended—this should determine how many different systems you’ll want to include. (If, for example, you have a metro system that only has a few dozen stops, you should consider layering a bus system on top of it to increase complexity.)

Here is our best estimate for ideal map size and transit complexity in different scale games:

(As a point of comparison, our game in Switzerland comprised about 1,800 stations, and our game in Japan was slightly over 8,500. Both would be considered “Large.”)

Setting Map Borders

After you’ve determined the edges of your transit system, you’ll need to establish a set of definitive borders for your game’s map. As we’ve mentioned, the scale of your map is entirely up to you—whether it spans your county or your continent—but it is crucial that all players are using the exact same set of borders. In some cases, these borders can be naturally emergent and easily standardized; a game that spans a single country, for example, can simply be contained to the borders of that country. For smaller scale games—like those that take place in a single city or metro area—natural borders might be more ill-defined. (How big is Atlanta? No one knows!) In these cases, we would recommend setting your own hard borders using a tool like Google My Maps. Generally, it’s best to draw a square or circle that encompasses the totality of the transit system you plan on using for your game.

It’s also extremely important to ensure all players feel safe going to all areas of the map. Players should discuss safety beforehand, and if there are any areas where players would not feel comfortable going, they should be excluded from the map.

Considering Rest Periods

If your game is large enough to potentially span multiple days, you will also need to set rest periods for each day. For the sake of fairness, we recommend doing this ahead of time. These can be as long as you’d like, so long as all players reset to their exact positions when the game resumes. We’d recommend a minimum of 10 hours, in order for all players to get sufficient rest.

Ending Your Game

Generally, Hide and Seek ends once the predetermined number of rounds is complete. If, however, you’re playing with a hard out (i.e. you have a flight home or, you know, need to go to school/work) we would also recommend setting an end-of-game timer. In that case, the game would end whenever you reach the predetermined number of rounds or the timer runs out, whichever comes first.