Imagination Party Pack

Need to plan a birthday party? Get one of our Imagination Party Packs and let the adventure begin!

Royal Academy Party Pack

Your little kings and queens will learn about what it takes to be a ruler during this Royal Academy party pack. Activities focus on real life kings and queens, etiquette, making hard choices and being a leader – but with dragons and crowns.

This product is currently in development.

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or see our research and inspiration by by following us on Pinterest!

Peculiar Post – Adventurous Letter Writing

by kenzie

The Peculiar Post provides you with materials to send and receive an adventurous series of letters.

Peculiar Parents

old letters and postcards — Photo Credit: Joanna Kosinska

“Hi Honey”
“Hi Mom”
“What have you been up to?”
“Oh you know, things. Um, we went to the park yesterday.”
“Did you get a job yet?”
“…..”
And so starts 80% of my mother daughter conversations. We are too alike, know each other too well, worry about each other too much, to ever have a normal conversation that isn’t shadowed with every fight or comment we’ve ever used to cut each other.

This “game” seeks to help with that awkwardness of being an adult child. I wish that I knew more about my grandparents and parents. But every visit home seems too rushed, filled with events and traditions. We don’t have time to really sit down and talk – and I wouldn’t know what to say if we did.

This series of postal inspiration is for exchanging a set of letters with your parents or grandparents along a theme. If someone has a big birthday coming up this works especially well if you get one for several cousins or siblings so the lucky person is overwhelmed with letters!

or see our research and inspiration by by following us on Pinterest!

Peculiar Odyssey

man in a bunny suit on a bench

Depression and anxiety affect us all at one time or another. Sometimes it is hard to know how to be there for someone who is fighting the good fight. You want to be supportive, but you also don’t want to hover and aren’t sure what to do because dealing with mental illness is an odyssey peculiar to each person.

We’ll send you a series of letters, activities and other fun/mysterious things that you can send to that person you’re thinking of. This isn’t therapy or professionally sanctioned – though many of the activities are based on real studies and therapies. Mostly it is just a way to do what you can. To show you’re trying and that you care.

This product is currently in development.

You can help us out by filling out the survey below!

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or see our research and inspiration by by following us on Pinterest.

Back Burner Projects

by kenzie

Still on fire – but without fuel. I fell in love with these ideas and they are now in various stages of planning, dreaming and denial.

The Calliope Compendium
bringing fantasy worlds to life

Status: Planning Stage

Similar to P.A.M, this is a concept for a collaborative website. Scholarly work as a game – an invitation to experience more of the world and stretch your imagination.

The idea is to find, catalog and codify the cultures, dances, music, food, activities from real life that let us experience what life is like in our favorite fantasy worlds.

I’ve mapped out how it would work, but we haven’t launched yet so the content is non existent at the moment.

Looking for collaborators if you’re intrigued.

I love P.A.M

Status: Planning Stage

Not really a game – but more like a global invitation to be creative and play. P.A.M or the People’s Art Month is a concept for a month long celebration of indulging in artistic pursuits. It is permission for anyone to call themselves an artist and complete a piece of visual fine art (excluding written or musical art) that expresses an idea – in a month. Hopefully it would have a similar effect as Nanowrimo and encourage people to have the confidence to be artists and increase appreciation of artistic pursuits. We would work with galleries and museums to encourage them to accept submissions from P.A.M participants on a special day at the end of the month, which also gets people into the museums.

Looking for collaborators if you’re interested – kenzie@acadiamoon.org

Imagination Group Games

by kenzie

These games have been play tested and kid approved for large groups. We hope you enjoy them and please let us know how it goes!

Three Monkeys
Group Game for Acting, Storytelling and Empathy

This game can be played with large groups from the age of 6 to 14 about. It teaches creative storytelling, acting and emotional empathy. Great for a drama class or a writing class where you are discussing plot, dialogue and character development

This game would be appropriate for school groups, drama clubs, church groups or as a camp activity.

Cupcake Shop
Creatively Teaching Work Skills

cupcake2

This is a game that teaches basic economics and allows for several different kinds of imagination play. Acting, recipe/cooking creativity, math, making decisions – it is most engaging while playing if you allow a lot of freedom, but also ask a lot of questions and encourage players to really think through their decisions and inhabit their roles.

Cupcake Shop includes directions and worksheets templates for :
Manager Planning Sheet
Menu
Order Sheet
Receipts

If you play it, please let me know if you had to make any changes!

This game would be appropriate for school groups, church groups or as a camp activity.

Paparazzi
Privacy, Chaos and Photography skills

This game starts by teaching basic photography concepts of focusing and the rule of thirds – then devolves into delightful chaos – then leads to a potential discussion about privacy and celebrity culture.

This game would be appropriate for school groups, church groups or as a camp activity.

ARGs are for kids

by kenzie

Alternate reality games (ARGs) are immersive stories that offer a different and secret worldview. Through books, websites, personal messages and other types of media the gamemaker creates an another reality that is not, but could be. Many ARGs have been based on conspiracy theories and filled with suspense and danger – accessible only by adults of a certain mindset. Wildly popular games like “The Beast” which promoted the movie AI or “I Love Bees” which promoted the video game Halo have certain things in common, they were sponsored by corporations and meant to promote a certain product, they rely heavily on electronic media such as text messages, websites and message boards, they were too difficult to solve on your own and they centered around dark and paranoid story lines that pushed the line between game and reality.

Acadia Moon’s approach to games

At Acadia Moon we have a slightly different view of what ARGs could be. For children the possibility of another world is always real, around every hedge and behind every wardrobe. They only need the barest of suggestions and direction in order to build worlds in their minds greater than any construction of a gamemaker. Alternate reality games – on a smaller scale, supplemented by physical objects and with adults acting as characters/facilitators could bring all sorts of fantasy worlds to life.

Slightly organized chaos

A wonderfully chaotic example of how easily children create whole worlds from the smallest suggestion is the tale of the Troll Queen. As a counselor at a summer camp we organized a day of games fashioned around fairytales. Children were allowed to wander around the camp from game to game, completing quests. I had the role of jail keeper. When sent to me I had some fun tasks like finding life savers in powder sugar etc and was supposed to keep them for a time before letting them free. After an hour or so this was a little boring because not many kids were earning jail time, so I started hamming it up a bit and calling myself the Troll Queen. I asked all my prisoners if they’d like to join my kingdom before I released them – painting the Troll tattoo on their face or hands, three lines connected in a ‘V’ like a bird foot. I didn’t have any plans for my kingdom – I just told them that they needed to come when I called.

It was amazing how quickly this side game rolled out of control. Kids started bringing other recruits to me and even kidnapping kids to become converts (I quickly made it known that I only wanted willing recruits). It was fascinating from my perspective to see how the lore and traditions developed with no direction or help from me, battle calls, salutes and officers. Other counselors stopped by to see if I knew what was going on as the whole camp started splitting into factions of Troll and non Troll. Things could have actually gotten nasty if we hadn’t been about to take a break for lunch. All the kids were spread out across the soccer field eating and I decided that I needed to bring an end to the Troll game before we continued in the day. Taking a deep breath I started making a loud bird like call. I had never told the kids what the call would be, but somehow they all knew and 150 kids were sprinting joyfully across the field towards me echoing the call. We danced around in a circle, whooping and shouting, then I gestured regally for them all to kneel and announced that they had served me well but that I was releasing them from my army and that they should do me honor by being kind to all those who had not heeded my call. Thus the Troll Army dissipated easily. But I could not forget the powerful creativity and community spirit that a simple suggestion had created.

My favorite game

When I was younger our favorite game was ‘Tales of the Crystals’. It was a board game in name only – truly it was one of the most creative imagination games I’ve ever played. You played with 4 others and each chose a plastic amulet gem to wear that represented a ‘power’ for the player, a certain talent to help their team through the game like healing, true seeing, or protection. There were 4-5 locations that you set around the house before the game – the castle, the glen, the village etc. Then you listened to a tape and the story unfolded. You were given missions that went along with the story and often a side quest given randomly from secret message cards. Then the rest was up to you – with your fellow players you went to the location, imagining your own monsters and perils based on what had been described in the tape and completed the quest however you wanted. Similar to role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons the players were responsible for creating half the game.

This is the type of ARG or imagination game that Acadia Moon creates. Beautiful artifacts and storylines that inspire players to create their own and require them to get outside and work together in small groups. But these types of games are expensive and intense to create and run, too difficult for small groups to make. Acadia Moon will create games that can be adapted and used over and over so that groups of all kinds can benefit from ARGs.

Easy Puzzle Hunt Party

by kenzie

This game is for adults and is great for a group night out or other special occasion. The primary equipment is just your phone. It was play tested with a 4 teams of 5, ages 25 to 50.

Time: 2 hrs

* Phone

* printed clue letters

Optional – gold necklaces, gold decorations and prizes

How do you host a fool proof puzzle party hunt for marginally committed, slightly lazy and definitely distracted grown-ups? Something complicated and creative enough to hold their interest, but easy enough to set up so that you don’t feel too upset if they don’t ‘get it’. On March 16, 2015 I ran a game for a group of friends in Washington DC and I wanted to share how I put this together because it is easy replicable. The basic mechanic was ‘visit all the places’, but I added in some chaotic competitive elements and as much mystery as possible.

Playing

The game was presented as an initiation for the illustrious and mysterious “Aurum Society” (no relation to the Ponzi scheme of the same name, really not sure how I missed that in my research). Aurum is latin for gold and the game centered around collecting gold, virtual and real, by following clues.

The Invitation

Players were invited by email (Paperless Post to make it more fancy and official) to join the “Aurum Society” and go through the “Trial” to prove their mettle. I actually might have been too mysterious in my invitation because several people thought it was a scam of some kind! It is a fine line between scam and mystery. I sent a follow up email with only vital information about the time period to plan for, appropriate clothing suggestions and everything else I could tell them to make sure they would be comfortable. If there was anything I didn’t have to tell them, even small harmless details, I didn’t – because it always fun to guess rather than know.

The First Clue

On the day of the game, I sent an email with two numbers in it and instructions to “Be polite to the sprite”. These were the latitude and longitude for the starting location, which was a pocket park near where all the players worked in DC (Connecticut and M St NW, if you know the area).

When players found their way to the park during the specified time range, there was a little girl dressed as a fairy. I had enlisted the help of a coworker and her adorable 4 year old daughter to be my “sprite”. My sprite gave them a gold paper carnation to pin in their lapel to identify them to other players, a gold necklace (their first bit of booty) and a fancy letter. I tried to stay out of sight, but did end up coming out to help facilitate the start of the game.

The Letter

In the top left you can see what the letter looked like folded. The first thing you see upon opening it is a quote from Christopher Columbus about how great gold is. Then you open it up further to see a letter with instructions on the left and list of rules on the right. Unfolding one level further to reveals 5 clues.

The instructions tell the players to find at least 4 team mates and to send a picture of their team with their team name to the Gamekeeper – me. Whoever sends this picture is the designated contact and will be sending all the clue solutions and receiving any additional clues. This is how the Gamekeeper keeps track of how the game is progressing and controls information – through texts with the various official team contacts. The next step is for the teams to decipher the clues in the letter – they can take whatever approach they want. They are explicitly told they are allowed to Google.

Each of the clues would lead to a statue within a 10 or 20 minute walk of the starting point, but I did not specify that they should be looking for statues. The clues are dictated by the history of the statue but I think the type of the puzzles could be easily adapted to any statue.

The Clues

Clue 1: A part of a poem by Henry Longfellow – could be anything, a quote or piece of writing by the statue person. It just needs to be unique enough that it couldn’t be attributed to anyone else. Make sure by Googling it yourself.

Clue 2: A picture of golden retriever doing a warrior yoga position – Picture puzzles can come in many forms, this clue was referring to a statue called the Golden Warrior outside the Kazakhstan Embassy. A more complicated statue could be represented by several pictures.

Clue 3: A matching puzzle of sickness and their funny cures – the lines cross through letters spelling a name. A matching puzzle could be made with any theme depending on the statue and then have the letters spell the name of the statue.

Clue 4: Two truths and a lie about a person. By researching the facts they learn some interesting facts and figure out the statue.

Clue 5: An anagram of a name created using this website.

Putting it all together

At first, I used the open source ARIS game system – but as the date drew nearer I was worried about the recently updated system’s performance and didn’t want my friends stranded by tech, so I opted for a much simpler – but I think much more flexible and reusable format based on sending and receiving pictures with my phone.

When teams had solved a clue, they had to go to the statue’s location and take a picture with the statue to prove they found it. The official team contact sends the picture to the Gamekeeper by text and then the Gamekeeper sends back a picture clue for the final party location. Once the team has found all the statues and received all the picture clues they should be able to figure out the final location. I also added two none final location clues that directed people to two bars along the way where they needed to take a picture of at least one person drinking to get another final location clue. At the final location I had a bunch gold necklaces, a couple gold decorations on the table and a poster where I had been keeping track of the ‘gold’ earned by each team.