Kod Kopernika Toruń Outdoor city game in Toruń for companies and groups
Decode Toruń
A modern detective city game for companies and groups in Toruń's gothic Old Town. Three tools - a map, custom riddle cards and an app in the referee's seat - are tied together by a counting-down clock. The winning crew is the one that reads the Toruń code first.
Where did the idea for this outdoor city game come from?
Toruń's Old Town means something different to everyone. For the office worker it's a shortcut across the Old Market Square, for the runner morning kilometres along Philadelphia Boulevard (Bulwar Filadelfijski), for the foodie the scent of freshly baked gingerbread, for a night out an evening beneath gothic townhouses. Local and visitor alike tune in, each in their own way, to the city's medieval pulse, its scent, its brick architecture and its Hanseatic mood.
The thing is, swept along by the everyday, we rarely lift our heads. We pass pointed-arch portals, stone mascarons and the places where Copernicus once was without resting our eyes on any of them. The most intriguing details hide in plain sight - as the saying goes, we can't see the wood for the trees.
Years of designing and running city games have taught us to track down Toruń's secrets - the ones that intrigue, surprise and pull players in completely. We turned every one of them into a riddle, and from the answers we built a single, one-of-a-kind cipher.
The City Code. The Toruń Code.
How we designed Kod Kopernika
We built the game on three pillars: a map of the gothic Old Town, hand-designed cards, and an app playing the role of a cool, impartial arbiter. We wrapped it all in a counting-down-clock mechanic - and that's how a fresh, tech-driven form of corporate team-building was born: the Kod Kopernika outdoor city game.
// app = referee
Map
A paper map with a marked-out slice of the gothic Old Town - the whole game plays out right here.
Cards
The front carries a photo leading to a spot, the back a sly riddle to crack.
Application
Mission control - an impartial arbiter that measures the time and updates the leaderboard.
Breaking outdoor-city-game standards
Kod Kopernika turns the usual city-game formulas upside down. Here are the things you'll look for in vain with us:
No guide will walk you from station to station with tasks like driving nails, forcing padlocks or shredding cabbage.
You won't be tracking down animators to coax the next clues out of, the ones who decide at their own whim whether you've earned them.
You won't waste time at the finish line waiting for someone to check the answers and announce the result - the app settles that on the spot.
So now that you know what isn't here - what do we expect of you? Give your imagination free rein, sharpen your senses, add a pinch of sharp-eyed attention and sink into a game where solving our riddles is only the warm-up for the real fun.
// game cards
Hiding in plain sight - our guiding idea
Our riddles don't follow the beaten track. They're a workout for the mind, because the very wording is a puzzle in itself. We want you to look at Toruń the way Copernicus gazed at the stars - inquisitively and from an entirely new angle.
We went for modern tools, but we built the riddles so that Google, Google Lens or Maps won't hand you the answer on a plate. It's your eye and your ingenuity that decide - and after every game we watch with curiosity how the next teams scheme their way through.
Who's in charge and what's the goal?
The brain of the game is an app on a dedicated webpage, tracking every team's move in real time. The crew enters each freshly gathered piece of information into the system straight away. A correct answer is another digit - a fragment of the cipher that will freeze the team's counting-down clock. Stopping that clock is precisely the overriding goal.
Constant contact with the system adds a flavour of rivalry - you keep an eye on your rivals' progress as you go. But so things don't get too cosy, the leaderboard refreshes every 15 minutes and goes completely still half an hour before the finish.
The final half-hour plays out in radio silence.
How the game unfolds
Every crew's chief task is to stop the clock as quickly as possible and wrap up the game.
To pull it off, the team has to obtain the secret CODE that halts the game's running clock.
To freeze the clock, you head to the prepared webpage and enter there the CODE worked out during the game.
To gather the pieces needed to assemble the code, players set off into the alleyways of the gothic Old Town in pursuit of answers. The trail runs through the game cards, with photos hinting at specific spots. Only at the right point does the solution fall into the investigation crew's hands :)
Collecting every fragment of the puzzle opens the final decryption stage - working out the CODE that lets you log into the webpage and freeze the running clock. Whoever gets there first wins.
// investigation team
Who is the outdoor city game for?
It doesn't matter whether you live in Toruń, the Chełmno Land, somewhere else in Poland or abroad. If riddles draw you in, crosswords are a good time, rebuses hook you, mysteries intrigue you, and cracking codes is your idea of fun - Kod Kopernika is waiting for exactly you!
Companies looking for some out-of-the-ordinary fun in the city for their crew, or a clever bit of team-building, reach for us - and alongside them, private clients: for hen and stag nights, birthdays and surprises. We run the game in two language versions: Polish and English.
Companies
Clever team-building for the crew and offbeat city entertainment of a kind your employees haven't met on any away-trip.
Private parties
Hen and stag nights, birthdays and surprises - for the moments when a standard party just doesn't do it for you.
Anyone who loves puzzles
Locals and visitors, Toruń and the rest of the country, in Polish and in English - if rebuses and codes are your thing, you've come to exactly the right place.
Arena: the heart of Toruń - the Old Town
The playing field is the historic core of Toruń - the gothic Old Town on the UNESCO list. Each team gets a paper map with a marked-out area inside which to hunt for clues. It leads them near the House of Nicolaus Copernicus, beneath the Krzywa Wieża and along the defensive walls by the Wisła river, uncovering little-known facts and details that usually escape passers-by.
A little tip - straying beyond the marked-out area doesn't add up, because every minute spent out there is a loss in the fight for first place.
// game zone
You play when it suits you
We've planned the game so you can step into it on a date that suits you. Going for KOD KOPERNIKA, you order from us as many packs as you need. One pack handles a team of 3-4 - so a group of 20 will go through at least 5 packs. The leaner the line-up, the slightly higher the bar :)
We meet on an agreed day, at a chosen time and at a set point. We walk the participants through the rules and launch the app that runs the game. From that moment you're on your own - the win will be decided by your sharp eyes, your wits, how you handle time and how well you make the most of the whole crew's strengths.
Once the time set for the game runs out, we gather at the agreed spot and announce the results of the individual teams.
That's the moment we crown the winners and reward them accordingly.
Game promo video
Ready to decode Toruń?
► Book the gameWhat does it cost?
Curious what it costs? Just write to us or give us a call. We price each game separately, to fit it sensibly to your needs. Flag your interest and we'll send back a quick, clear quote - no obligations, no clauses in the small print. Get in touch - and let's keep playing!
Frequently asked questions
Pretty much any time of year and any hour of the day. With the shorter, chillier days in mind, we've prepared a separate NIGHT edition!
There's no upper limit. We split all the participants into four-person teams, and there can be any number of them.
Since the teams roam the lanes of the Old Town without an organiser's supervision, the participants' age has to allow for that in the eyes of the law.
The briefing, the search phase and the finish add up to roughly 3 hours in total. The game's time frame is firmly fixed.
Both adults and teenagers fit right into the fun. The key to a good time is an open mind and a sharp eye.
The heart of the game is the cards: photos of objects to track down on one side, nicely twisted riddles on the other. Most of the photographs show details of the gothic Old Town so small that Toruń locals don't have it any easier. And the riddles themselves give every player a run for their money. So yes - Kod Kopernika is for a resident of any corner of Poland. We promise everyone will have a great time.
The game closes within a time and place fixed in advance. Even if a crew doesn't put the code together, they'll still reach the finish (the meeting point) and learn their final placing. We built the game around the participants - it calls for thinking, sharp eyes and cunning. Above all, though, we put a good time first, so we've done our utmost to let every team feel the taste of success and never get bogged down in a sense of helplessness at any stage - that tends to put people off :)
