Self-Guided The Gouda Syndicate City Escape Game

The Gouda game opens on the Markt, with the Stadhuis Gouda standing on its own in the middle of the square. From there the trail runs past De Goudse Waag and round the long flank of the Sint-Janskerk. Gouda is covered on foot here, over the market square and along the canals just behind it.

Families, friends, couples and colleagues make up the usual teams for an outdoor escape game like this. Two to five players share one phone, and everyone is given a character with a role in the mission, so the team gets further by talking than by rushing. Groups of more than five split up and play as several teams. There is no guide and no fixed departure, and Gouda is compact enough that the whole route stays within a few hundred metres of the square you started on.

How to play

Starting in Gouda takes four small steps.

1. Book the City Game
2. Check the instructions email
3. Download the Loquiz app
4. Start playing whenever you like

Magnus is somewhere ahead with the stolen formulas. The team cracks codes, argues its way through riddles and completes photo tasks at the places his trail turns up, with each character able to read something the others cannot. The search takes in the Vroesenhuis and the water at the edge of the old centre before the formulas are recovered.

Two teams playing at the same time makes a competition of it, which is why the game turns up on teambuilding days as often as on family outings. Nothing is on a clock, so you can pause for cheese and coffee and resume afterwards. The trail begins and ends on the Markt in Gouda.