From installing it to hosting your own.

Flaguu is in beta, which means it is distributed through TestFlight — Apple's app for trying apps before they are on the App Store — rather than the App Store itself.

1. Install TestFlight from the App Store. It is free and made by Apple.
2. Open the Flaguu beta invitation link on your iPhone, and tap Accept, then Install.
3. Open Flaguu and make an account. You need one so the game can tell whose group is whose.

Joining a game someone else is hosting

1. Ask the host for their six-digit code. They can see it on their hosting screen.
2. Tap Join Game and type the code into the keypad.
3. Pick your team, and then your group inside that team. A group is the people physically walking around together.
4. Allow location access when it asks. This is what puts your dot on the shared map — without it your team cannot see you.

The fastest possible route to a real game: take one somebody else has already built and host it as it is.

1. On your iPhone, open the Community page and tap Download on a game you like. Safari puts the file in your Files app.
2. Open Flaguu, go into the creator, and open Game Settings.
3. Tap Import and pick the .json file you just downloaded.
4. Have a look at the map. Is the play area somewhere your group can actually get around in a couple of hours on foot and transit? Move it if not.
5. Check the teams. Add or remove groups so there is one group per set of people walking together.
6. Host it, read out the code, and go.

What to change first, if you change anything

• The play area. Everything else is fine anywhere; the map is not.
• Game length. The timeline's Game End event decides when it stops.
• Starting coins. Too few and nobody can afford a bus; too many and nothing is a decision.

Start a new project and pick a game type. The type sets sensible defaults for everything else, so choose the one closest to what you picture and adjust afterwards. Capture the Flag is the easiest to explain to a new group.

Teams and groups

A team is a side that scores. A group is a set of people physically together with one phone leading. Two teams of two groups each is a good shape for eight people.

• Give each team a colour — it is how they are told apart on the map all game.
• Set starting coins. This is the single biggest lever on pacing. If transit is expensive, the first twenty minutes are on foot.

The timeline

The timeline is the game's clock. Every event is placed at a number of minutes after the start.

• Game Start and Game End always exist. Moving Game End is how you set the length.
• Round End splits the game into rounds and can reset things — drop all flags, clear hands of cards, wipe active effects. Rounds are counted by these events firing, not by the clock, so ending one early from the host console does the right thing.
• Coin Multiplier makes challenges pay more for a window. A double-coins stretch near the end pulls a runaway game back together.
• Game Pause stops play for a set time. Turn on lock location and everyone must return to where they were standing before they can carry on — that is your lunch break.
• Announcement pushes a message to every player.

A first timeline worth copying

• 0:00 — Game Start
• 0:01 — Announcement, five minutes: the rules in one sentence
• 1:00 — Round End: drop flags, clear cards
• 1:00 — Game Pause, ten minutes, lock location
• 1:30 — Coin Multiplier ×2 for the last half hour
• 2:00 — Game End

The map editor draws on top of a real map. You place three kinds of thing: points (a flag, a place), lines, and areas.

Start with the boundary

Draw one area and mark it as the game boundary. It is not scored and nobody is punished for leaving it — it tells the game where the edge of the board is. Hide and Seek in particular needs it, because that is what its map-cutting is measured against.

Then the zones that do something

• Scoring zones — where a flag has to be brought. Assign one to a team, or leave it open so either side can score there.
• Safe zones (Tag) — you cannot be tagged inside. Keep them small, or people will camp.
• Out of bounds — somewhere genuinely unsafe or unfair. Big empty parks and freeway edges are the usual candidates.
• Hiding zones (Hide and Seek) — the hider must end up inside one.
• Goal zone (Tag) — reaching it still holding the item ends the game there and then.

Sizing it honestly

Walk the diagonal of your boundary in your head. If it is more than about forty minutes on foot, either shrink it or make sure transit is cheap enough that people will actually use it. A play area nobody can cross is a game where nothing happens.

Cards are where the personality of a game lives. There are four kinds of deck.

Writing a good challenge

• Make it checkable. "Photograph the mural" settles itself. "Explore the neighbourhood" starts an argument.
• Pay for travel, not for effort. A card that sends people across town should pay roughly what the fare across town costs, plus a bit.
• Vary the length. A deck of nothing but half-hour treks is exhausting. Mix in a few thirty-second ones.
• Write about places that will still be open. Especially for an evening game.

The deck settings that matter

• Draw cost — what it costs to draw. Non-zero makes drawing a decision.
• Draw cooldown — a wait between draws, so nobody can churn the deck.
• Max held — how many cards a group may have in hand at once. Two or three keeps people moving.
• Veto penalty — minutes a group is blocked after throwing a card away. This is what stops people fishing for an easy one.

Hosting puts your game up as a live game everyone else joins. A game has three states, and the swipe bar at the bottom of the host screen is how you move between them.

Before you swipe to go live

1. Read out the six-digit code and wait until everyone is actually in a group. This is the step people rush.
2. Check the group list — someone always ends up in the wrong one.
3. Confirm everyone has allowed location, or half your map will be empty.
4. Say the win condition out loud. Once.

While it runs

• The standings board sits above the bar and re-ranks live.
• End Round Now ends the current round early and applies its resets. Useful when a round is clearly decided.
• The overrides panel corrects scores and coins. Someone will complete a challenge in a spot with no signal, and you will need this.
• If a player gets stuck in a location pause, you can release them from the host screen.

On a free account you can host two games at a time.

Hide and Seek is the most involved type, and the one that rewards preparation most. One group hides; everyone else searches by asking questions that visibly cut the map down.

The shape of a round

1. Hiding period. The hider gets a head start to reach a hiding zone. Seekers stay put.
2. Questioning. Seekers ask from the map; each option previews the cut it would make. The hider answers, and the answer draws the region it just ruled out.
3. Endgame. Once a seeker walks into the hiding zone, the search is on in earnest.
4. Catch. Then the groups rotate and the next one hides.

Setting it up

• Draw two or three hiding zones, not one. One zone is a coin flip; three is a search.
• Place the pins the questions measure against — stations, museums, parks, libraries. Questions like "are you nearer a station than I am" are computed from these, so a map with none of them has nothing to ask about.
• Write the question menu in the Decks tab, not in settings. That catches everyone out the first time.
• Mark the unfair places out of bounds. Hills, huge parks, anywhere with no phone signal.

Pacing advice

Three rounds is a good afternoon. Give the hider ten to fifteen minutes to disappear — long enough to get somewhere real, short enough that the seekers do not get bored.

1. Open your project's Export screen in Flaguu and export it as a file. You get a .json.
2. Go to the submission form and fill it in.
3. Attach the file. It is checked in your browser first, so you find out immediately if it is the wrong one.
4. Submit. It is read by a person before it goes on the page, so allow a day or so.

What makes a game people actually download

• Say how long it takes and how many people it needs in the description. This is the first thing anyone wants to know.
• Name real places. "Around Lake Merritt" tells someone far more than "an urban area".
• Say what is unusual about it. If your version of tag has one strange rule that makes it sing, lead with that.
• Play it once first. Every game has one card that does not work outdoors, and you only find it out there.