A PDF / Text
Puzzle set (questions, hints and answers)
Plan for three answer choices per question, one of which is correct. Prepare around 10 questions.
PROJECT RECIPE / No. 02
Puzzle Hunt at a Roadside Station
Turn a quick stop at a roadside station or tourist facility into a stay of several hours with a puzzle hunt. With a paper booklet plus smartphones, you can build a system that naturally creates more chances to use shops and restaurants, in as little as 60 minutes.
TIME
~60 min
Excludes puzzle creation
LEVEL
★★★
Preparation required
PLAN
from ¥4,400/mo
Also free to try
SCALE
Any number
Any scale
#puzzle-hunt #longer-stays #roadside-station #tourism #regional-revitalization
GET STARTED
Two ways to start a puzzle hunt project with T&T
Choose whether to build and run it yourselves, or leave everything from planning onward to us.
Build it yourselves
Build and run it in World Builder
Follow this recipe to set up questions, answers and rewards in World Builder. With an AI agent that supports T&T MCP, you can do the setup in one go. The basic features are free.
See how to build it
Leave the planning to us
Nazotoki Pack (history puzzle hunt "Folk Diver")
We handle everything from research, puzzle writing and storytelling to the system and impact reporting. Your facility or municipality mainly sells and promotes the booklet. Setup from ¥550,000 (tax excl.).
See Nazotoki Pack (Japanese page)
01 — For Whom
Who this is for
01
Want to attract visitors with a puzzle hunt
Give people a purpose, like "going to play a puzzle hunt", and they will come from far away. Great for bringing new visitors to roadside stations, shopping streets and theme parks.
02
Want to extend visitor stays
Puzzle hunt participants stay on site for several hours. In Season 1 of the "Ikai Hunter Exam" example, about 75% of participants stayed 2–5 hours, and some spent several days exploring Tono. You can also expect them to walk around the shop floors and use restaurants when they take breaks.
03
Want to turn time on the shop floor into sales
The longer people stay, the more chances naturally arise for them to buy fresh local produce, souvenirs and soft-serve ice cream, and to use restaurants.
02 — Materials
Materials
2 ITEMS / ALL OPTIONAL
B PNG / JPG
Digital item image for correct answers
Prepare images such as stamps or coins that record the number of correct answers.
Recommended: 340 × 340 px or larger
03 — Steps
How to build
5 STEPS / ~53 min
Log in to T&T and complete the "Basic settings" and other setup, then click the "New" button in the "Items" menu.
01
Register the correct-answer item
In the admin screen, go to "Items → New" and register the item that people who answer correctly will receive. Choose "Credit" as the type. Then upload the image from material B and save.
1 min Admin Material B needed
02
Register the answers
In the admin screen, go to "Events → New" and register an answer choice. Name the event something like "Question 1, Choice A".
1 min Admin Material A needed
03
Set answer limits and rewards
In the event settings, find "Check-in restrictions" and set the per-user limit to "1". Next, under "Reward item settings", choose the item (Credit) you set up in Step 1 from the drop-down menu and enter how many points to give for a correct answer. No setting is needed for incorrect choices. Finally, click "Save changes".
1 min
04
Repeat for every question and answer choice
Repeat Steps 2–3 for every question and answer choice. With 10 questions of 3 choices each, you will end up creating 30 events.
30 min
05
Build a website that lists the answer choices
Each event you create gets its own URL for answering. Post all 30 URLs on a website (or a web page, etc.) where users submit their answers, and your puzzle hunt answer page is complete.
20 min
T&T MCP
Do the whole setup at once with an AI agent
In the steps above, you register one event for every question and choice (30 events for 10 questions × 3 choices). With an AI agent that supports T&T MCP (such as Claude Code), just tell it the questions, choices, correct answers and rewards in chat, and Steps 1–4 are registered in one go. The answer page can also run on printed QR codes alone.
- Time required
- About 30 minutes (with questions, choices and images ready)
- What you need
- An MCP-compatible AI agent + an API key (issued free in World Builder)
- New to this?
- We offer the "T&T Nazotoki Kit", which walks through the steps, for free
Example: the history puzzle hunt "Folk Diver: Ibaraki-machi Edition" had all 9 questions set up in about 30 minutes.
* The puzzles themselves cannot be created in World Builder or with T&T MCP (with Nazotoki Pack, we write them for you).
READY?
With T&T,
you can launch in 30 minutes.
Sign up with just a Google or Apple account. Try everything from creating a project to publishing it, completely free.
04 — FAQ
FAQ
9 ITEMS
Q.01 Do participants need to install an app? −
No. They can answer from their smartphone browser. They just access it via the QR code printed in the booklet or a URL provided by the organizer.
Q.02 How should we create on-site hints? +
You can base hints on real scenery or objects, or post sheets of paper with hints written on them. It is helpful to provide "clues for solving the puzzle" rather than the answers themselves.
Q.03 Can rewards be tiered by the number of correct answers? +
Yes. Users can check the items they have earned on T&T's "Bag" screen. By setting criteria such as "X points or more" or "X items or more" based on the item given for correct answers, you can tier the points awarded after the puzzle hunt ends.
Q.04 Can people who can't visit in person take part online? +
If you put all the hints on the web, you can run it fully online. T&T itself is designed to work entirely online.
Q.05 Can cheating (such as asking friends for the answers) be prevented? +
Online, you can limit the number of answers and the time allowed, but you cannot prevent things like friends sharing answers offline. You will need to ask participants to refrain from this as a matter of puzzle hunt etiquette.
Q.06 How many participants can it handle? +
The Basic plan (free per month) lets you create up to 10 events. Each answer choice is one event, so with three-choice questions you can build a puzzle hunt of about 3 questions. The Advanced plan (¥4,400/mo, tax incl., billed annually) lets you create unlimited events, so you can build a full-scale puzzle hunt with 4 or more questions. The number of participants you can support depends on monthly check-ins. Each question a participant answers counts as one check-in, up to 1,000 per month on Basic and 10,000 per month on Advanced. As a guide, a 3-question puzzle hunt supports about 300 people a month on Basic, and a 10-question puzzle hunt about 1,000 people a month on Advanced. Please contact us for anything larger.
Q.07 How long do participants stay and play? +
In Season 1 of the "Ikai Hunter Exam" example, the median time from registration to completion was about 3 hours (75% of all participants took 2–5 hours). As a half-day sightseeing activity, we recommend describing the time required as "about 3–4 hours (including sightseeing and breaks)".
Q.08 Will people enjoy it to the end without dropping out? +
In Season 1 of the same event, currently running, the completion rate remains high at over 80%. Combining three-choice answers, on-site hints and rewards tiered by the number of correct answers makes it easier to keep people playing to the end. Sending hints via LINE or similar to people who still haven't finished several hours after registering helps prevent drop-off even further.
Q.09 How should we design puzzle difficulty? +
It is most exciting when puzzles are not too easy and the answers split evenly across the choices. In the example, deliberately placing a "trick" question early on that makes people hesitate deepened immersion. For questions people tend to get stuck on, a thorough explanation shared at a later date increases satisfaction.
05 — Case Study
Tono Monogatari × Puzzle Hunt: Ikai Hunter Exam
A full-scale puzzle hunt based at the Kaze no Oka roadside station in Tono, Iwate Prefecture, that keeps participants at five locations around the city for several hours. It is run with a paper kit and an answer system built on T&T, and is held year-round. In Season 1, currently running, more than 80% of participants complete it on average.
With inspiration and legwork,
take on otherworldly beings in a battle of wits
A year-round puzzle hunt set in the world of "Tono Monogatari". Hints are placed at five locations around the city, centered on the Kaze no Oka roadside station and Denshoen. Participants buy a ¥1,500 puzzle kit and answer three-choice questions on their smartphones. Depending on the number of correct answers, they receive a Grade 2, Grade 1 or Special Grade "Ikai Hunter License"; every participant gets a pin badge, and those who answer correctly receive an NFT of the spirit beast Izuna. In Season 1, currently running, more than 80% of participants complete it on average. From registration to completion, participants spent an average of over 3 hours at the roadside station and other facilities in the city.
- Organizer
- Ikai Hunter Association (Tono Furusato Shosha × Tales & Tokens)
- Industry
- Tourism / Regional revitalization
- Scale
- Year-round / 5 locations in the city
- Elements
- Multiple-choice quiz, tiered rewards, pin badge exchange, NFT distribution
80.2 %
Completion rate (Season 1, interim)
3 hours
Average stay (median from registration)
100 +
Season 1 participants (ongoing)
T&T DASHBOARD
Player activity by time of day
* Based on T&T dashboard data. Share of check-ins by hour (%, Season 1 / ongoing).
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18+
About 60% of activity is concentrated between noon and the 3 p.m. hour, then tapers off naturally in the evening. This creates a comfortable flow of people that matches sightseeing in Tono and the opening hours of each facility. Trends like these can be tracked in real time on the T&T admin dashboard and used to optimize guidance times and hint delivery.
06 — Voices
User voices
"
「Puzzle lovers from all over Japan keep coming to the Tono Kaze no Oka roadside station to play the "Ikai Hunter Exam", and we can feel a new wind blowing.」
Naoji Kihara
Executive Officer, Tono Furusato Shosha (Tono Kaze no Oka Roadside Station↗)
07 — PRODUCED BY T&T
If you'd like to consult on the whole project
We at Tales & Tokens are the ones who actually plan and produce the "Ikai Hunter Exam" featured above. From worldbuilding, puzzle writing and on-site hint design to building the answer system and analyzing data, we can work alongside you on the entire puzzle hunt-based service.
Consult from the planning stage (free) 
Feel free to reach out even at the idea stage. Online consultations are free.
What we can do together
01
Planning & concept design
We bring out the stories of your region and the appeal of your facilities, and design everything down to visitor routes.
02
Puzzle & scenario writing
We help with difficulty balance, "trick" questions and immersive storytelling.
03
System setup
We build the answer system on T&T and hand it over ready to run.
04
Data analysis & improvement proposals
Based on your T&T dashboard data, we propose improvements to difficulty and visitor routes.
NEXT
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