In addition to being a fan of puzzles and gamified gifting, the Surprizle team also loves a good geocache.
For those unfamiliar with the geocaching activity, it’s a modern day treasure hunt that revolves around discovering small ‘caches’ hidden by other participants all over the world. The geocache treasure hunt is more about the experience of discovery, though, than it is about walking away with pieces o’ eight.
It’s also a lovely excuse for a walk outside – with a small boost of dopamine at the end when you locate the hidden cache. (Check out our friends at Geocaching.com for more info on the game itself.)
One of our favorite types of geocaches to solve is the multi-stage cache which involves completing a series of interconnected games, puzzles or activities to locate the cache at the end.
Which started us wondering…would it be possible to make a surprizle even more challenging by creating a multi-stage puzzle that would involve completing different types of challenges in order to claim the prize at the end?
Turns out, that answer is yes. But it took a bit of trial and error to make it work. And the process still isn’t perfect.
So…if the plain ol’ everyday surprizle puzzles need to be kicked up a notch, you can turn that simple word puzzle into a combination of trivia or jigsaw or word puzzles. All of which would need to be solved to eventually lead the gift receiver to the prize.
To get started, you’ll want to do a bit of mapping out of how this is going to work. For the sake of demonstration, let’s assume you’re going to build a two-stage game using both the Word and the Jigsaw puzzles. With the jigsaw puzzle being the last and final challenge.
Start with Stage Two
To daisy chain these puzzles together, you’ll need to start by working backwards. Define the prize and the final stage puzzle first.
Critically, during the design phase, you will list your own contact information in the delivery fields. Do not deliver this puzzle to the recipien -, deliver it to yourself.
Once you have developed this puzzle and sent it to yourself, you’ll want to copy the puzzle link – which you will then paste into the next puzzle you design.
Stage One
Select the option for a Word puzzle, where the prize is an e-card. At the e-card development step, type a message indicating that the link for the next stage of the puzzle is below.
Select the 6 letter word that you want to use as your puzzle and then move to the next step.
At this point, you’ll paste the link / URL for the Stage Two puzzle into the “Include a message” field. Next, enter the recipient’s information into the delivery fields, followed by your information in the sender fields.
Send the puzzle as you normally would.
The Recipient’s View
When the recipient gets their Surprizle notification, the link that is provided will be to the Stage One puzzle. And when they complete this puzzle, it will contain a message from you which lists the link to the next stage in the game.
Like this:
The recipient then completes the second (and final) stage of the puzzle and ‘unlocks’ the prize.
Critical Note
Because you didn’t list the recipient’s contact information in the 2nd and final stage, you will actually be the person who receives the gift once the person solves the puzzle. Once you’ve received notification that they have completed the puzzle, you should then forward the prize to them – and all should be good.
Right now, the way we have Surprizle designed, if you list the gift recipient in the ‘recipient’ fields during the design process for the 2nd / Final Stage puzzle, that person will receive the link about the 2nd stage of the game BEFORE they receive the link to the 1st stage.
While testing this, we successfully daisy-chained five different puzzles together. It’s a bit of a logistics challenge, tracking which game links go where – and when I tested this with one of my kids, they politely (and pointedly) suggested that stage after stage after stage of games was “a bit extra,” Dad.
So…as I’ve said before, know your audience. If they’ll enjoy a longer version of Surprizle, give the multi-stage game try. But if their patience is already tested by a single stage game…then maybe this isn’t the activity for them.
Happy gaming, everyone!
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