Zakodowany Wrocław Outdoor city game in Wrocław for companies and groups
Decode Wrocław
An outdoor city game for teams and crews, played on the largest Market Square (Rynek) in Poland. A map, custom puzzle cards and a referee app - all tied together by a ticking clock. Victory goes to the team that's first to crack the Wrocław code.
Where did the idea for this outdoor city game come from?
For one person it's the daily route across a bridge over the Oder river, for another a morning coffee on the Market Square or an evening among the townhouses. Some roll into town for a business meeting, others drop by as first-time tourists. Whether a born-and-bred Wrocław local or a visitor, everyone soaks up the local greenery, the buzz of the bridges and the easygoing Silesian spirit of getting together in their own way.
The thing is, in the daily whirl your eyes just skim the surface. Thousands of people walk past the dwarf statuettes, the Gothic ornaments of the Town Hall and the traces of bygone cultures without stopping at them even once. The most fascinating details lie right under our noses - and we simply can't see the wood for the trees.
The years we've spent designing and running these games taught us one thing: how to track down the city secrets that intrigue, amuse and pull you in completely. Every such secret we turned into a riddle, and all the answers wove together into one unrepeatable code.
The City Code. The Wrocław Code.
How we designed Zakodowany Wrocław
We wove together three pillars. The first is a map with the play area marked out, the second - custom cards full of riddles, the third - a dedicated app that's the brain and impartial arbiter of the game. We wrapped it all in the frame of a ticking clock. That's how a fresh, tech-driven form of team-building was born - the Zakodowany Wrocław outdoor city game.
// app = referee
Map
A paper map with a section of the Old Town circled - your playing field on the Oder river.
Cards
On the front, a shot pointing you to a specific corner; on the back, a wickedly twisted puzzle.
Application
The heart of the game - an impartial arbiter that counts down the time and updates the leaderboard.
Breaking outdoor-city-game standards
Zakodowany Wrocław turns the well-worn formulas of outdoor games completely upside down. Here's the list of things you'll look for in vain with us:
No guide will lead you by the hand or make you hammer nails, force open padlocks or shred cabbage.
You won't be tracking down actors stationed around the city who decide on a whim whether you've earned your next clue.
Nobody will be hunched over the finish line tallying points by hand - the verdict lands instantly and automatically in the app.
Now that you know what you won't find with us - it's time to explain what we'll actually put in front of you. Fire up your imagination, sharpen your senses, add a pinch of sharp wits and dive into a game where cracking our riddles is just a taste of the best part to come.
// game cards
Hiding in plain sight - our guiding idea
Our riddles don't follow the beaten track. They're a real workout for the mind, because the wording itself can be a puzzle in its own right. As we put them together, we want you to see Wrocław differently than usual - from a surprising, non-obvious angle.
We went for modern tools, but we tailored the puzzles so that Google, Google Lens and Maps won't do the thinking for you. What's at stake is your own eye and ingenuity - and every time we're curious to see how inventively each new team rises to it.
Who's in charge and what's the goal?
The whole game is conducted by an app running on a separate website that tracks every crew's moves live. The moment a team picks up a lead, it checks it in the system straight away. Each correct answer reveals one digit - a piece of the code you can use to halt the ticking clock. And stopping that clock is goal number one.
The constant dialogue with the system adds one more shot of adrenaline - you keep glancing at how your rivals are doing. But to stop things getting too comfortable, the leaderboard refreshes every fifteen minutes, and half an hour before the finish it freezes completely.
The final half-hour plays out in radio silence.
How the game unfolds
Every crew's top mission reads: halt the clock and reach the finish faster than the rest.
There's only one way to pull it off - by capturing the secret CODE that suspends the game's running clock.
Halting the clock means logging in on a dedicated website using the CODE you've worked out along the way.
To gather the building blocks needed to assemble the code, teams roam the streets of the Old Town in pursuit of answers. Your signposts are cards with photos pointing you to specific places. Only at the right spot does the solution fall into the investigative crew's hands :)
Completing all the pieces of the puzzle opens the final decryption stage - working out the CODE that lets you log in to the site and bring the clock to a stop. Whoever does it first takes the win.
// investigation team
Who is the outdoor city game for?
It doesn't matter whether you live in Wrocław, in Lower Silesia, in another corner of Poland or beyond its borders. If you're drawn to riddles, you love crosswords, you swallow rebuses whole, mysteries get you going, and you treat code-breaking as a gauntlet thrown down - Zakodowany Wrocław is cut out for you!
Companies reach for us when they want an unusual city adventure for their staff or an inventive team-building outing, and alongside them come private groups - hen and stag nights, birthdays and surprises of every kind. We run the game in two language versions: Polish and English.
Companies
Inventive team-building and an unconventional city outing the whole crew will remember.
Private parties
Hen and stag nights, birthdays and surprises - for those moments when standard celebrating just isn't enough.
Anyone who loves puzzles
Wrocław locals and visitors, Lower Silesia and the rest of the country, in Polish or in English - if rebuses and codes are your element, come on in.
Arena: the beating heart of Wrocław - the Old Town
The playing field is the historic core of Wrocław - the Old Town with the largest Market Square (Rynek) in Poland. Teams get a paper map with the play area circled, within whose bounds you have to hunt for answers. It leads you to the Gothic Wrocław Town Hall, to the Jaś i Małgosia (Hansel and Gretel) townhouses, towards the cathedral on Ostrów Tumski and to the hidden dwarfs, revealing details you walk past indifferently every day.
A little tip - stick to the marked area, because every step beyond it is precious seconds lost in the race for victory.
// game zone
You play when it suits you
You kick off whenever it suits you best. Choosing ZAKODOWANY WROCŁAW, you reserve as many game packs as you need from us. One pack covers a crew of 3-4 players - so a group of 20 needs at least 5 packs. The leaner the team, the slightly higher the bar :)
We meet you on an agreed day, at an agreed time and at a set spot. We run through the rules, launch the app that commands the game - and from that moment you're on your own entirely. Victory will be decided by your alertness, your sharp wits and how cleverly you split the time and talents within the team.
When the allotted time runs out, we gather at the agreed point and announce each team's results.
That's the moment we crown the winners and reward them accordingly.
Game promo video
Ready to decode Wrocław?
► Book the gameWhat does it cost?
Curious about the price? The easiest thing is to drop us a line or give us a ring. We price every booking individually, because we want an offer cut to fit you exactly. Give us a shout that you want to play, and we'll send back a quick, clear quote - no obligations and no asterisks in the small print. Write away, and we'll take it from there!
Frequently asked questions
Pretty much any time of year and any hour of the day. With autumn and winter evenings in mind, we've also prepared a NIGHT edition!
There's no upper limit. We sort the whole field of players into teams of four, and there can be as many of them as you like.
Since the crews move around the Old Town on their own, without supervision, the youngest players must be of an age that legally allows it.
The briefing, the hunt for solutions and the finale add up to roughly 3 hours in total. The time frame is set in advance.
Both adults and teenagers have a brilliant time with us. The key to a great game is an open mind and a hawk's eye.
Game cards are the foundation of the fun: on one side, shots of the objects to find, on the other, pretty wickedly twisted puzzles. The photos show details so subtle that even native Wrocław locals don't get it easy. The riddle text is a challenge for every player. So yes - Zakodowany Wrocław is for every resident of Poland, and we guarantee everyone will have a brilliant time.
The game wraps up at a time and place fixed in advance. Even if a crew doesn't manage to crack the code, they'll reach the finish (the meeting point), where they'll learn their final placing. The whole thing was designed with the players in mind - it calls for thinking, alertness and a bit of cunning. Above all, though, we value a good time, which is why we made every effort to let each team get a taste of victory and never, at any point, feel helpless - because nothing kills the spark like that :)
