A room-code multiplayer manhunt game — no accounts, just a code and a name.
You need at least 4 teams — two Drivers and two Hostage teams — so that every hostage team has someone to drop them off and someone else to hunt them. Every round pairs up teams in two roles: Drivers and Hostages. Drivers drive a Hostage team out somewhere and drop them off, then switch to hunting a (possibly different) Hostage team. Once found and — if the admin set one — brought back to the finish location, the round is scored on how long it took.
Teams and players are tracked separately, so a team can exist with nobody on it — the team cards show each team's members as small name bubbles so you can spot an empty one before starting a round. When you join with the room code, you can create a new team (name it, pick Driver or Hostage), join an existing team someone else already made, or skip and let the admin sort you later. The admin can always reassign anyone from Manage, or hit Randomize Teams to shuffle unassigned players in — you don't have to hand-configure everyone if a big group shows up at once.
On the Timer tab, your own active hunt is always shown bigger and first — other pairings you're part of (like a drop-off you're also running) sit smaller underneath.
The admin sets this up before each round in the Manage tab. For every Driver team, you pick who they drop off and who they hunt — and those don't have to be the same team. Two different Drivers can never be assigned to drop off (or hunt) the same Hostage team; the chart blocks that automatically.
Here, Red and Blue are both playing Drivers for two separate pairings running side by side. Each pairing has its own independent clock and status — if your hunt target hasn't been dropped off yet, your screen says so, and you'll get a ping the moment they are.
The admin sets this from Manage, either with "Set to My Location" or by dragging a pin on a satellite map before confirming.
Attach a photo when you mark someone found — it pops up full-screen on everyone's phone right away, and everyone can view or download it from the Updates and Board tabs afterward. Big camera photos get shrunk on your phone before sending, and a progress bar shows exactly how far along the upload is, so you're never left guessing whether it's stuck.
Once a Hostage team turns on "Share My Location," their hunter can see a circle-and-dot radar (direction and rough distance, not exact coordinates) toward them. It only appears once revealed — either automatically, a set number of minutes into that hunt, or whenever the admin flips it on manually from Manage. Sharing is always the Hostage team's choice.
That same shared location is what most of the power-up hints read from — True North, Street Name Drop, Home Stretch and Jurisdiction Leak all need it. With sharing off, those come up empty for your hunter.
Hostage teams can set a group phone number when they sign up (or the admin can add it later). Once you've dropped your own people off and your hostage has been dropped off too, a "Call my hostages" button appears on your pairing card.
An optional twist the admin can turn on. Once every pairing in a round is past drop-off, a wheel spins on a timer (default every 15 minutes) and every still-hunting team gets exactly one result — nobody sits an interval out, and nobody gets stacked with two at once. Your result either helps your own hunt, or comes up sabotage, in which case a rival gets the credit for hitting you.
You only ever see power-ups that touch you. What a rival team drew is hidden — only the admin sees the full picture on their Updates feed. (Hostage teams still get a heads-up about what's hitting their own hunter.) Round starts, drop-offs and finds stay visible to everyone as usual.
One minute costs one point, and the lowest total wins. Find your hostage in 10 minutes and that round costs you 10.0; take 12 minutes 30 seconds and it costs 12.5. There's no cap — a slow round really is worse than a fast one, all the way up. Giving up costs the flat give-up penalty (30 by default) instead of your actual time. Power-up penalties are baked straight into your clock, so they show up in your score automatically.
The admin's Scoring setting only chooses whether totals read as minutes or as points — the ranking is identical either way.
Whoever creates a game becomes its admin on that device. Everyone else joins with the room code and a name — no accounts, no passwords. The code is big and tappable at the top of the Timer tab for quick copying or sharing.
Add @hostagesupdates_bot to a Telegram group chat, then send /link ROOMCODE in that chat to get live game-milestone updates — round starts, drop-offs, finds, and photos — posted automatically as they happen. Send /unlink to stop.
Each post is stamped with the local time where the game is being played (US Eastern unless the admin's own timezone says otherwise), not UTC — so [1:05 PM EDT], not [17:05 UTC].
The admin can set a maximum time per round (or leave it unlimited). It resets fresh at the start of every round and only shows on the Timer tab while a round is actually in progress — if time runs out, that round is stopped with no score recorded, but the game itself keeps going and the admin can start another round right away.
This is built for a trusted friend group, not to resist someone actively trying to cheat or attack it — there's no real security beyond the room code, and shared data (like phone numbers and live locations) is visible to everyone in the game, not just the people it's meant for. Your location is only used if you tap a button that asks for it. When everyone has left (or the admin leaves for good), the game and all its photos are deleted permanently after a short grace period. Details are in the Privacy Policy and Terms.