Team Scavenger Hunts on Campus: 7 Teams, 220 Finds in One Afternoon

Everything we had run up to April 2026 scored players as individuals. For the NOVA IMS Spring Bootcamp we switched the model: players joined teams, every find rolled up into a shared team score, and the leaderboard ranked teams instead of people. One campus, one afternoon, 20 hunters across 7 teams.

The Numbers

• 7 teams, 20 hunters
• 220 treasures found, an average of 11 per hunter
• 19 social claims on top of the physical finds
• 45,650 SB tokens minted on-chain
• 3 finds separated first place from second

The Race Stayed Close

Data Ninjas won with 42 finds. Byte Squad and Data Explorers tied behind them at 39, a final margin of three finds.

Team size did not decide the outcome. The winning team had three members; Data Explorers had four and still finished behind them, and the last-placed team also had four.

What Team Mode Changes

Scoring by team changes behavior in ways individual leaderboards do not.

Nobody idles. On an individual leaderboard, a player who falls behind quietly drops out. On a team, three other people notice. Average finds per hunter came out at 11 in a single afternoon.

Strategy appears. Individual play rewards walking fast. Team play rewards planning: who takes which building, who goes back for the missed tag, who handles the social claims.

The game gets social by default. Team formation itself works as an icebreaker, useful at an event where participants have just met.

Where This Fits

The team model is built for groups that arrive together and should leave more connected: student orientations, bootcamps, open days, and corporate offsites. A campus works especially well as a venue because it is large enough to make routing decisions matter, and familiar enough that nobody gets lost.

The complete results, including the team race over the afternoon, are in the Spring Bootcamp 2026 report. For the format itself, see team building scavenger hunts and scavenger hunts for universities.