Quest as a good business idea
Quest rooms or quest rooms are a popular area of the event business, along with attractions and game rooms. Completing interesting tasks within one or several rooms, or an entire city is an excellent alternative to a regular feast, a trip to nature, or another way to have a pleasant and interesting time.
Opening your own business in this field is not difficult. You need a room, task scenarios and the necessary props. The organizational form for registering a business is individual entrepreneur. OKVED 92.72 - “Other activities for organizing recreation and entertainment, not included in other groups.”
Such a business is promising in cities where the population is slightly over 400,000 people. In some small cities there are no quest rooms at all or only 1-2 such establishments operate.
With a competent approach to marketing, studying the competitive environment and offering quality services, the revenue of a quest room with 3-4 groups of visitors on weekdays and 8-10 on weekends will be 252,000 rubles per month. According to analysts, the profitability of this business idea exceeds 100%.
Table comparing the strengths and weaknesses of a business idea for opening a questroom:
Weak sides | Strengths |
Difficulties in coming up with and implementing original ideas | Cooperation with cafes, restaurants, hotels, children's playrooms will become a source of stable income |
Negative reviews will spoil the impression of the location and weaken customer interest | Your own website and social networks are an effective way to attract new customers |
Not all clients like prepayment work, and without it there is a high risk of customer no-show | The key to success is friendly staff, interesting surroundings and originality of adventures |
The need to frequently change the program in each location, otherwise the interest of visitors will disappear | Convenient work schedule. Easy to adapt to customer wishes |
Prospects for business expansion. In one city you can open several questrooms with different locations |
What do different types have in common?
Despite the differences in genres, all quests have a number of things in common:
- Usually quests are a team game. On average, the number of participants varies from two to six.
- In the room you will need to complete various tasks that require ingenuity, logic and intuition in order to achieve the final goal.
- A certain time is allocated to complete the quest.
- Participants outside the room leave all gadgets and items that can somehow be used during the quest. The game uses only those items that are present in the quest room.
The most important thing is that in order to successfully complete the game you will not be able to collectively “chill.” Only well-coordinated teamwork produces positive results.
Why do people participate in quests?
Reasons why people willingly choose this type of holiday:
- this is an interesting pastime (in 1 hour the team solves 15-20 sequential and parallel problems);
- an opportunity to escape from everyday worries and immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the game;
- training for intelligence;
- testing your abilities and reaction speed in situations requiring quick decision making;
- the opportunity to see your friends, work colleagues, family members from a new perspective;
- a way to tickle your nerves, get extreme sensations, and show your hidden talents and abilities;
- gaining new experience;
- psycho-emotional reboot, energy boost;
- receiving pleasure, positive emotions;
- a memorable way to celebrate a birthday, February 23, March 8, company anniversary, wedding, or any other memorable event.
Participation in quests is a way to unite the team. This type of leisure is one of the team building tools that shows the role of each employee in the team.
The tasks are not limited to the territory of a shopping center or a closed questroom. Some of them involve moving around the city. Players then use scooters, bicycles or cars to quickly move around in search of clues.
If you don’t know the city well, this is a good way to get to know it or look at long-familiar places with fresh eyes.
Quest script for finding a gift in an apartment for a husband, wife, child, mother, friend
- As an example, here is one of the scenario options for a quest to find a gift for your husband. The beginning of a quest game can be considered the moment he receives a note, message or call, informing him that a surprise is hidden somewhere for him, which can only be found by completing a series of tasks, and in a certain sequence.
- The same message also tells you the first step to take to search: “Open the washing machine and check what’s there!”
- The player opens the machine and sees a beautiful postcard in it, on which it is written: “Your gift is waiting for you to find it.” And then you can offer the first riddle, which will direct the player, say, to the refrigerator: “Go to the white, cold, full of food.”
- The next step is a plate in the depths of the refrigerator with some tasty treat (a piece of cake, a pastry) and a note: “This is delicious, quickly swallow it!” . And under the tasty treat is another note, or even better, a picture depicting, for example, a flash drive.
- The next stage is viewing the contents of the flash drive, on which there is a document created in advance, hinting with its name at your attitude to the quest (it can be called “quest”, you can congratulate on the holiday, write to “the best gift seeker”, etc., that your imagination will tell you). And right there in this document there is a hint telling you where to move next - let it be a door.
- You can draw a door, place a photo, or encrypt it in the form of a riddle. When the player understands the further direction of movement, he must find the necessary door on which the following message is attached in a corner or rolled up. It contains a hint that the next stage is the balcony.
Quest at home
- Again, it can be given in the form of a riddle, a drawing, or a description of the things that are there. Among these things there should be a note indicating that the gift seeker should move to a chair. Perhaps not right away, but he will find a sticker glued to the bottom, which will hint that it would be nice to read the latest news, and not on the Internet, but in their paper version.
- The newspaper (or magazine) lying nearby will be the next stage of the quest , and the clue will be letters highlighted in several publications, or a whole word circled with a marker. And this word is camera. To complicate the task, you don’t need to add anything else, just let him think about what to do next. You can give a small hint to the child - you should not take photographs, but look at the photographs contained in your memory.
- Among these photographs he will find the image he needs: a microwave oven tied with a bow and decorated with balloons. Now it’s clear where the gift is hidden - the quest has been solved!
What types of quests are there?
The types of this fun leisure activity vary by location, theme, focus, age of participants (family for moms, dads and children, 18+ (erotic), children's, economic, intellectual, wedding).
Let's take a closer look at the most common directions.
Quest room (Questroom)
This is a special room (one or several rooms) with a themed interior, inside which various tips and tasks are hidden. The players' task is to find clues, go through all stages of the test and get out of the questroom.
Each room has a separate stylistic design, immersing participants in the fabulous atmosphere of the gaming action. The atmosphere is complemented by lighting and music (depending on the scenario and equipment of the establishment).
Live quests
This type involves the distribution of roles between players according to the proposed scenario. The basis of a reality game is the script of a book, film, or computer game, which “comes to life” through the efforts of the players. This form of quest is used to unite the team, as a group psychotherapeutic method.
Children and adults can take part in the live quest. For children, plots from children's works and cartoons are used as scripts.
Outdoor quest
You can play not only indoors, but also outdoors. Outdoor form - searching for treasure, passing various tests, holding relay races in nature. It complements a corporate trip, birthday celebration, or leisure time at a children's camp as an entertainment program for schoolchildren and students.
City quests
Have you not yet settled into a new city or, on the contrary, are you very familiar with your native places? Take part in the city quest. Look for clues on the sidewalks, walls of houses, solve riddles to find the final point of the game route before others.
Labyrinth
Participation in this program is a great way to test your speed of thinking, resourcefulness, and ability to quickly navigate a situation. The goal is to find a way out of a labyrinth room or confusing passages and passages built in the open air. Going through labyrinths is equally enjoyed by adults and children.
Children's questroom
This is a room with a children's interior, designed for active games, treasure hunting, solving riddles, and finding a way out of the maze. The complexity of the tasks and the duration of the event depend on the age of the participants. For children of primary school age, some scenarios include the participation of adults (animators, presenters, parents).
A virtual reality
Want to spice up your favorite computer game? An indoor quest with a themed interior and “revived” characters from the famous computer saga performed by real actors - maximum immersion in virtual reality.
Depending on the chosen scenario, you will have to overcome difficulties, face dangers, negotiate with “evil heroes” or “kill” them.
The quest changed my life. Future plans
And now it’s already the third year since the quest “In Panic” began its existence. This business has given me a lot. I'm finally doing what I love. Even if the expectations have not yet been met, we are working on it. But the most important thing is that it was in the quest that I met my love. One of the visitors offered to help with the design of the leaflets; they were a little lame. We've been together ever since. And she still helps with the design.
Now, in parallel with the Kirovskys, we are developing quests in St. Petersburg. We will maintain direct communication with the northern capital. So stay tuned for all the new products, we will have all the most interesting things!
TOP 5 popular ideas for quests
There are many ready-made scenarios, but consider even the best methods only as an example, a basis for creating your own unique idea.
We bring to your attention 5 examples of the most popular ideas as a source of inspiration for developing your own gaming program.
Idea 1. Quest with notes
The essence of the idea is simple: participants find the first note with a task or riddle, after solving it they will find the next clue and so on along the chain. The outcome of the game is finding the treasure, receiving symbolic prizes and souvenirs, or leaving the questroom. For a 1 hour program you will need 15-20 notes.
You can even play this game at home or in the office. Pick up tasks with hints, hide them in different places in the apartment and play. This is an original way to give a birthday gift, confess your feelings or just relieve boredom.
Idea 2. Quest with a map
You can go through the stages of the quest with a map on the scale of an apartment, a house yard, or even a city. Take a map of the area - draw a schematic plan of a house or yard with landmarks, as well as cross dots indicating places where “artifacts” are hidden.
Connect the artifacts with each other according to their meaning (for example, the pieces of a puzzle, connecting which you will get a solution image) so that they become the key to the answer.
Idea 3. Photo quest
Participants are divided into teams and given a map or route diagram and a camera. The route map indicates the locations where the objects that need to be photographed are located. At the end of the game, the teams show their photos to the presenter. He evaluates the speed and quality of each team’s task and announces the winner.
The second version of the photo quest is the use of photographs and images as clues for finding the key or solution to the task.
Idea 4. Quest “by the arrows”
The mechanics of this game are elementary. Participants are over 3 years old. For the game, draw arrows pointing to the next location. Play in the apartment, in the forest, in the park, in the yard. Overcoming obstacles on the way from location to location will complicate the process and make the quest interesting and dynamic.
Idea 5. Quests with riddles and puzzles
Do you like anagrams, puzzles and riddles? A dynamic intellectual quest is an excellent memory and thinking training. The answer to each of the tasks will smoothly lead you to deciphering the main riddle and receiving a symbolic prize - a comic medal, a certificate or a funny souvenir.
The advantage of this adventure is that it can be carried out anywhere, even during a long journey in an airplane or car.
A prison, a detective solving a crime, a mysterious street, finding a way out in an empty room are the most popular ideas for a game plot.
Quest plot
Card 1
The plot of the office quest with the search for a gift is based on the idea of traveling through the virtual rooms of the office. Each card has its own interesting and unique design. The quest participant seems to wander through the drawn office rooms and solve tasks that lead him to new puzzles, secrets and secret places that he just wants to solve. This quest game begins with the participant finding a festive box at his workplace, with a beautiful large bow and a note “A gift for the best colleague” (or something in such a pleasant theme). Having found the gift, the quest participant opens the box and finds a surprise in it - the first card with the task (see above). In this card, the participant will have to read a humorous text, the words of which are written together: “And the gift is yours, if you quickly understand the meaning of the puzzle, then the fun will need to run.” If you read closely, you can see individual words. As a result, you can easily read the following text: “And your gift is gone, but if you quickly understand the meaning of the puzzle, then you need to run straight to the closet.” After reading the text, the participant will need to immediately run to the closet, where a new envelope with a fun task awaits him. Thus, the participant, solving fun puzzles on various office topics, will get closer to the main goal - to find a long-awaited and well-deserved gift. Quest for the whole team:
If you decide to organize congratulations for the whole team, then choose a larger holiday box and place it at lunchtime right in the middle of the corridor in the office
.
You can put a card on the box and write “For all our unique women” or “To our courageous men.”
After reading the postcard, all your colleagues will understand that participation in the quest must be taken collectively.
How to choose a theme for a quest - useful tips and tricks
The choice of topics for quest scenarios depends on the target audience for which you are preparing the program. Consider the age of the participants, their interests, and professional activities.
Regardless of the chosen topic, the program should contain 10-20 tasks on logic, intelligence, physical activity, observation, sensory organs, as well as several “wow-effects”, that is, unexpected turns of events, finds.
The program is often based on the plot of a film, computer game or book. Choose those topics that are at the peak of popularity today. “Star Wars”, historical adventure stories (pirates, robbers), computer games (“Minecraft”, “Resident Evil”, “Lara Croft”) are always relevant.
When compiling a program based on a film or game, carefully study the source. It is not necessary to play out the storyline exactly.
Take a mechanic, a character, or one of the episodes that can easily be developed into an interesting, unique story. For maximum immersion “into the theme” you will need costumes, surroundings, props, and interior decor.
For psychotherapeutic quests, the leader must know exactly the problem that the participants want to “play” for psycho-emotional release.
To help a novice author, a video recording of the webinar “10 Rules for an Excellent Quest Scenario”:
Quest tasks
◊ The Lost Gift is a fun task with which the quest begins. All the words of the first task are written together and the quest participant, after reading a long sentence, needs to understand where the next cache is. ◊ Office Rules - a fun task in which the quest participant, by analogy, needs to unravel the comic rules of the office. According to these rules, the next cache will be found. ◊ Changeling is a simple attentiveness task in which the participant needs to decipher the text of the task using the illustrated keyboard. ◊ Saving extension cord is a logic puzzle in which several extension cords are used and you need to correctly calculate how much equipment can be connected with them. Having found the correct answer, the participant will find out the next cache. ◊ Find a match
- a fun task in which the participant has to find a pair for each office tool.
◊ Turn it on and get the answer - a fun task in which only office equipment knows the secret of the next secret place. To recognize it, the participant needs to turn it on correctly. ◊ Password - an observation task in which the participant has to understand the relationship between time and letters. ◊ The extra will tell you what you need - a fun task in which the participant, based on everyday experience, needs to know what items are superfluous in the office. ◊ Game of Colors is a logic puzzle in which the participant needs to select the correct decoding algorithm based on the image of stationery items of a certain color. ◊ Decoding is an easy task in which the participant, using the available letters, needs to determine its correspondence to a specific object.
You can read reviews about our quests here “Reviews”.
5 common mistakes when organizing a quest
It’s easy to make a mistake when organizing a program by choosing the wrong props, not taking into account the specifics of the event location, or being too clever with the script.
Let's look at the 5 main mistakes of novice authors.
Mistake 1: Using fragile props
Any props that can tear or break are not suitable for the event. It will deteriorate and cannot be reused. Shards are a potential risk of injury. This is a bad reputation for a questroom. Even if no one gets hurt from the spoiled props, visitors are unlikely to like it.
Use beautiful, interesting props as decoration for a photo zone. Unusual surroundings and a themed interior are a way to attract the attention of customers.
Mistake 2. The game is too long (lack of dynamism)
Even if the quest is based on puzzles and riddles, it should have dynamics. Diversify the list of tasks with dynamic tasks, add “wow” effects, for example, unexpected actions that players need to perform in order to get the next puzzle. Tasks must constantly replace each other. There shouldn't be too many or too few.
Play with problems from mathematics and physics to make their solution dynamic. Invite guests to test some laws of physics in practice by conducting simple experiments
Mistake 3. Neglecting safety precautions
The place where the event is held must meet fire safety standards and sanitary requirements. This is especially important for children's quests that involve dynamic movements of participants.
Make sure that all locations, props, and the process of completing tasks are not hazardous. This requirement is mandatory for all types of quests (away, city and even home, organized for preschoolers).
Mistake 4. Incommensurability between the scale of the location and the number of participants
In a spacious room, a small group of participants is forced to look for clues longer and spend more time solving problems. In cramped conditions, a large company, especially one consisting of men or teenagers, will not be able to quickly move from point to point or perform relay tasks.
Make sure that the number of guests corresponds to the area of the quest room and, if it exceeds the optimal one, then only by 1-2 people.
Error 5. The quest stages are not united by the same theme
If all the stages of the game are not interconnected and there is no connection between them, you will not end up with a quest, but simply a set of game tasks, after completing which the participants will not understand the general idea of the event.
If you are organizing a thematic quest based on a movie or game, take as a basis not only the images of the heroes or the main confrontation between antiheroes, but also the plot mechanisms so that the participants can indirectly guess what awaits them in the next location.
The single meaning of all actions and tasks that participants have to perform in order to achieve the main goal is the difference between a quest and role-playing sports games.
Start of the quest
1. Take a cardboard box of appreciable size. 2. Insert the first task card into it. 3. Pack this box with festive paper and tie it with a large beautiful bow. 4. Next to the prepared decorated box (which contains the envelope with the assignment), place a congratulations card or a bright note “To the best colleague” or any other text of your choice. 5. Place this prepared surprise gift in the most visible place so that it can be immediately discovered by the participant. It is best to place it discreetly on the participant's desk. Also, if desired, you can additionally place balloons nearby so that the gift is noticed faster. As soon as the surprise is found, from that moment the quest to find the gift will begin. 6. Place all further tasks in envelopes of bright colors and hide them in hiding places in such a way that the participant cannot accidentally notice them. 7. We also advise you to put a pencil in the envelope with the second task for entering your answers. Because, having found the second task, the participant will immediately know what to do.
Remember
- Anyone can write a quest. The main thing is to focus on the audience for whom the program is being written, and read reviews from participants in different programs.
- To promote a new gaming program, use prizes for the winners: souvenirs, tickets to a concert, to a club.
- Organizing fun adventures for a group of players is a profitable type of business.
- Don't buy expensive paraphernalia for locations. You can do a lot of things with your own hands or borrow them for free from neighbors or friends.
We wish you creative inspiration and success!
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DIY rainbow street quest
Next, we wrote a short quest script for the street; you can print out our sign with the sequence of tasks or simply write out the steps for yourself one after another. As prizes for the kids, I put bright slimes, neon sneaker laces, and spy pens (which write with invisible ink and can only be seen with a special flashlight) in a pizza box.
For your convenience, we have made a video instruction on how to conduct such a quest.
Subscribe to the Questix Youtube channel, we will teach you how to simply and interestingly spend leisure time with your children without leaving home.
You can also save time and buy a ready-made, beautiful street quest from Questix, you just need to print it out and place it around the house, details are at the bottom of this article.
Ready-made street quest script for children
If you have very little time to prepare, or you don’t feel confident in drawing or inventing, this does not mean that the children are left without a quest. We have already thought of everything to help you. A beautiful, bright and cheerful street quest for children from 6 years old is already ready, all you have to do is print out the cards and hide them on the street according to detailed instructions. It's very convenient and will only take about 30 minutes of your time. Even older children can easily cope and will be able to prepare a quest for younger ones, and this is no less exciting. The cost of a ready-made street quest is 350 rubles . You can read more about our quest and purchase it on this page. The quest will be sent to your email immediately after payment automatically.
We wish you an interesting time outdoors with your children, we hope that we have helped and inspired you with new ideas!