Vanguards of the Village is our most popular challenge course! Weave through the village haunts of the captivating cadres of artists, hippies, and musicians that became inseparable from the city’s identity.
Greenwich Village has long captured the imagination of New Yorkers and tourists alike. Join your team in getting to know it like never before by treating them to the ultimate challenge.
Curious about the history of the vibrant and energetic Washington Square Park? Enamored by New York’s love affair with jazz music? Hungry for an iconic slice of the nation’s best pizza? See the city like Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg did in the 1960’s, all without the help of a time machine. Book Vanguards of the Village to give your group a team building experience like nothing else out there.
The Great Gotham Challenge is an immersive puzzle adventure that combines mind-bending puzzles, food, live theater, history, and technology to create unforgettable team building experiences on city streets. It's like nothing else out there.
As the clock ticks, competing teams race to find and decode a series of interactive clues that engage the rich culture and history of the city around us.
Our two-to-four-hour experiences are designed to build cooperation, encourage out-of-the-box thinking, reveal hidden or unused talents, and explore the city as you’ve never seen it before.
Flexible enough to accommodate teams from four to 4000, large groups are divided into smaller teams that compete to find and decode a series of interactive clues cleverly embedded into the city's landscape.
Our state-of-the-art web app delivers visual, auditory, and tactile clues that prompt challengers to race between secret locations and perform interactive tasks to advance to the next clue. This might mean tasting a dessert to find the puzzle hidden within, retrieving a burner phone from under a park bench, receiving a keyword on a napkin in a speakeasy, or striking up a conversation with a seeming passer-by. Once they’ve solved all the clues, teams join each other again at the finish line to share food, drink, and tales of their experiences.
View other challenges.
Hudson Yards Hunt
Terminal Time Trial
Vanguards Of The Village
Central Park Sprint
New Amsterdam Scramble
42nd Street Dash
Mystery in the Mighty Metropolis
"We had high expectations and they were far exceeded. The challenges were difficult, extremely creative, and completely customized to our group. Suffice it to say our group couldn't have possibly had more fun. Thank you for making me look great!"
"I'm always very skeptical of these "team-building" events, but this one was over the top. They successfully handled our 120-person team, with puzzles that were really challenging. The whole experience couldn't have been more engaging!"
"One of our directors told me it was one of the best organized online challenges they've done."
"[The challenge] shattered any expectations I had. For a fully remote event, I expected a bit of cheesy fun, but the production quality is unbelievable. I absolutely recommend everyone to try it."
"To quote one of my teammates: "This [challenge] was mean and hard, and resultantly perfect." Thank you for the stellar experience, service, and fun."
"For a few hours, you get to feel like a secret agent as you traverse the mundane real world with a VIP pass for curated wonder."
"A mixture of live actors, custom puzzles, and clues built around pre-existing and famous structures in lends the event a sort of glam DaVinci Code energy."
Great Gotham Challenge is a once-in-a-lifetime event that starts at $2000 for our most basic, 2-hour in-person experience. However, most of our events are several times that scale - If you're dreaming big for a custom event, so are we!
For advance notice on public events and special early bird discounts, please sign up for our communique below: