Scavenger Hunt Clues and Hints

Seekt Quick Guide: The Hint System

Welcome to the Seekt Quick Guide series. In this episode, we are looking at hints and how they add a layer of strategy to your scavenger hunts.

Every item in Seekt can have hints attached to it. Hints come in two forms. Text hints are short written clues — something like "look near the north entrance" or "it is higher than you think." Location hints place a pin on the player's map with an optional label, guiding them toward a general area without giving away the exact answer.

You can attach multiple hints to a single item. Players reveal them one at a time, so you can layer them from vague to specific. The first hint might be a broad direction, the second a more specific clue, and the third nearly gives it away.

Here is where it gets interesting. Hints can be free, or they can have a point cost. When you set a hint cost on an item, every hint the player reveals deducts that many points from their team's score. This creates a genuine strategic decision: do you spend points to get help and finish faster, or do you save your points and try to figure it out on your own?

This pairs well with time-decay scoring. If an item loses value over time, spending a few points on a hint might actually save you points in the long run by helping you submit before the decay eats into the base value. Players who think about this tradeoff tend to have more fun with it.

On the host side, you set hints when creating or editing an item. You can mix text and location hints on the same item. The hint cost applies to each hint individually, so if you set a cost of ten points and there are three hints, a player who reveals all three loses thirty points.

Tips for good hints: make the first one general enough that it narrows the search area without solving the puzzle. Make the last one specific enough that anyone who reads it can complete the item. And remember that not every item needs hints — sometimes the challenge is the point.

That is "the hint system" in Seekt. For more, visit the seekt.ca website.