The work.

The game comes first — written for the people who will be in the room, and never run again. Everything else is built around it. Open one to see how.

Events hosted Designs created

Events hosted

Two fortieths · Hong Kong trails

They wanted a hike. We gave them a race.

Printed task cards laid out in colour-coded rows — **The card deck**Five kinds of card, colour-coded, printed for this one race.

A team gathered at a country trail signpost — **Real trails**Wilson Trail and Hong Kong Trail, not a function room.

Runners in team colours setting off up a flight of trail steps — **The start**Twenty-five guests, aged 7 to 55, off at once.

A checkpoint set up on a picnic table on the trail — **Five checkpoints**A picnic table, a marshal and a sealed envelope.

An illustrated route clue printed as a jigsaw with the pieces in a tube — **Clues as puzzles**The next location, handed over as loose jigsaw pieces.

Printed race markers and route cards laid out for assembly — **Built the night before**Every envelope counted, sorted and sealed.

How it was built

Two birthdays · 25 guests · 3 hours on foot

More detail

Two friends turning forty in the same year, both happiest outdoors and one of them a serious hiker. A dinner would have been wrong. So the party went onto Hong Kong's country trails: teams in colours, five checkpoints, and a route built so a seven-year-old and a fifty-five-year-old could both finish it.

Every task is physical — a jigsaw, a token, an object to find, a marshal to convince — because the moment one of them can be solved with a phone, the fastest team is the one that types quickest and the day is pointless.

The field25 guests, aged 7 to 55

RouteFive checkpoints, three hours on foot

MadeCard deck, jigsaw clues, markers, team crests

RuleNothing a search engine can answer

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A fortieth · The Belcher's

A carnival as crazy as she is.

A function room dressed as a carnival with bunting and a striped big top — **The room**A residents' clubhouse, turned into a fairground for one night.

A printed Welcome to the Carnival backdrop with gold forty balloons — **The backdrop**Designed, printed and hung for one evening.

A personalised card game laid out on a table — **A deck of your guests**Every card in the game carried somebody in the room.

A printed banner titled Her Likes and Dislikes with the scoring rules — **Her likes and dislikes**A game written about the guest of honour, scored on the night.

A carnival game station with a striped table and a printed sign — **Five stations**Named, signed and scored, all running at once.

Hands dealing cards across a casino mat — **Casino night**House rules rewritten so a table who had never played could start in two minutes.

A framed caricature of a family, captioned Meenal turns 40 — **Caricatures**Drawn on the night, framed, taken home.

How it was built

Indoor · 50 guests · multi-station

More detail

Five stations running at once, scored on a single sheet, with a queue system so nobody stood still. The games were written for this guest list — the card deck carried the guests' own faces, and the house rules were built around who was actually coming.

Two custom apps ran the night: one to keep the queue moving between stations, and a caricature station that turned a photo into a framed print while the guest waited.

GuestsAbout 50, six to seventy

StationsFive, run in parallel

MadeCard deck, newspaper, caricatures, station signage

SoftwareTwo apps built for the night

A beach, a birthday

An artsy birthday for the art teacher.

A decorated cake on a spotted cloth with HAPPY BIRTHDAY letters and the sea behind — **The cake**Iced to match the letters, and the sea behind it.

A table of paints, brushes and craft materials — **Everything provided**Paints, boards, brushes, aprons — nobody brings anything.

Guests painting at an easel on the beach — **Everyone paints**Easels in the sand, sea on the horizon.

Two guests painting side by side at a stone table — **Side by side**The quiet half of the party, which every party needs.

Parasols, bunting and giant birthday letters set up on a beach — **The setup**Parasols, bunting and giant letters, carried across the sand.

Painted boards propped on a table on the sand — **What they made**Every guest leaves holding theirs.

A close view of the decorated cake beside a champagne bucket — **And then cake**On the sand, in the sun.

How it was built

Beach · all ages · no power, no walls

More detail

A beach gives you nothing: no power, no shade, no tables, and a wind that takes anything not weighted down. Everything here was carried across the sand — easels, boards, paints, bunting and the letters — and carried back out again.

Art jamming solves the problem every mixed-age party has: the competitive ones want to win something, and the quiet ones want to be left alone. Painting lets both happen in the same hour, and everybody goes home holding what they did.

Paints, boards, brushes and aprons are all provided, so guests arrive with nothing and leave with something.

WhereA Hong Kong beach, carried in and out

MadeEasels, boards, paints, bunting, letters

RanPainting, cake, and the sea

Everyone leaves withThe thing they painted

April · The Peak

A shower in the fog, for the most elegant couple.

A misty lawn with a dressed bandstand, a teepee and a laid table — **Where it landed**A public bandstand on The Peak, and a white sky we did not order.

Two low tables, a teepee, a balloon arch and a chalkboard on a misty lawn — **The whole set**Two tables, a teepee, the arch and the board — built on the grass in three hours.

Balloon garland and hanging greenery on the bandstand — **The garland**Green, gold and white, built on site over two hours.

A low picnic table with a green runner and floor cushions — **Floor seating**Low tables, cushions, a runner — nobody sat on a plastic chair.

A plated burger and salad on a gold-rimmed plate — **Plated, not catered**Served at the table, on the grass, course by course.

How it was built

Outdoor · 40 guests · half a day of build

More detail

The site was a Victorian bandstand in a public park, booked for the afternoon, and it came with nothing — no power, no furniture, no cover. Everything in these pictures was carried up and built on the grass in about three hours.

Hong Kong gave us fog instead of sun, which turned out to be the best thing about the day. We stopped fighting it and let the balloons and the greenery sit against a white sky.

GuestsAround 40

BuiltGarland, teepee, two low tables, signage

RanGames between courses, no stage, no MC

WeatherHeavy mist. Kept it.

Designs created

A personalised card game laid out on a table, every card carrying a guest

A card game about your guests

A deck built from scratch so every card carries a guest.

A custom printed newspaper with a Breaking News headline

The custom newspaper

Their year on a front page — real stories, written up as news, laid out as a proper broadsheet and printed for the table.

A custom printed T-shirt worn at a party

Printed T-shirts

Designed for the night and worn on it.

Caricatures

Drawn while the party runs, framed, and taken home.

Hands dealing cards across a casino table mat

House rules

Every game gets its rules rewritten for the room — short enough that a table of people who have never played can start in two minutes, and balanced so the competitive ones do not run away with it.

Clue cards and route packs

Printed clues for hunts and city races, written so a phone cannot solve them.

The rules, rewritten

The part nobody sees.

A printed game board of cards showing a person's likes and dislikes

Games about the guest of honour

Her likes and dislikes, printed as a board of cards.

Station signage

Food Court, Can'n Ball, Ball in a Hole, Caricatures — every station named, designed and printed so the room explains itself.

Yours would be built the same way.

Four parties, and the things we made for them.

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