One day, I was struck with the inspiration to design an adventure for a child’s birthday party. Unable to ignore the idea pestering my mind, I decided to flesh it out.  It turned into an elaborate game, complete with script acted out by adults and many little games blended together into the story.

When it is time for cake, the king (the birthday girl’s dad) calms everyone down and goes to retrieve it. But when he returns, he shares the news that the cake is missing, and all that is left is a bag with puzzle pieces in it! The children put the puzzle together to discover a map, and they must follow the map in order to find the cake. Some of the small challenges involve hopping across stones on a river, finding the small baby monkeys hidden all around the yard (by an adult earlier), and learning how to defeat the evil magician who has stolen the cake!

For the adventure, I created a pdf containing instructions on how to plan, setup, and execute the party.  It included instructions for sending invitations (it is critical to the plot that the children know to bring their favorite adventuring companion), gathering materials, setting it all up, and a script for the adult characters to act out.  It also included handmade props, like the capes, the map and location signs, the puzzle, and I even made the little baby monkeys out of crayola clay.

This turned out to be one of the most rewarding of any of my personal projects. We actually got a chance to play test this at my cousin’s 6th birthday party. Months afterward, some of the parents told me their children were still talking about how much fun they had.