Maze Runner

How To Play Maze Runner

Set up: Choose one room to be the “Glade.” this will be a safe space for the runners. Have another room which will be the griever hole. Do not tell the runners where the griever hole is. This is where the grievers will return to recharge. The rest of the church will be the maze. Divide the youth into two teams about two thirds to one third. Or maybe have youth be runners and leaders be grievers. Have the larger team be the runners and the smaller team be the grievers. Give all of the grievers something to distinguish themselves from the rest of the group, such as a glow-stick bracelet, or a costume, as well as a marker. In each of the rooms in the maze put a letter on a paper taped somewhere in the room. Have these letters spell words that are not too complicated to figure out. You should have about one word for every two runners, about the same length. The code could be a Bible verse. If there are not enough rooms, put extra in bigger rooms like the sanctuary, and divide it into multiple sections. Do not make the letters visible on entering the room, but don’t make them extremely hard to find either. These letters are what will allow the runners to win. Keep some extra markers in the glade. Also in the glade, have a map of the church for every two runners. Have the lights on in the glade, but in the rest of the church have them on dim or off, to make it more difficult to find the letters.

Each room or section of a room, (for example divide the sanctuary into multiple sections) will spell out a word. In the night time phase of the game the leaders will change the letter from the one previously in the room and hide it in a different spot. If there are longer and shorter words, once a word is finished, rotate through it again.

Overview: the runners are trying to figure out how to escape the maze. The letters will form words which will create a code to allow them to escape the maze. (Stay tuned for maze runner part two: scorch trials) The grievers are trying to stop the runners from leaving the maze. If a runner is “stung” by a griever (tagged and a mark put on his or her hand) he will have to return to the glade and undergo “the changing” by having the mark crossed off, and being inactive for the next day phase of the game. If a runner is stung, he cannot return to the glade by himself, he must have another person with him.

How to play: There will be day and night phases to the game.

Daytime: In the daytime, the grievers must be in the griever hole to “recharge,” except for 1 or 2 who will still be in the maze. The runners may go around the maze and look for the letters, to attempt to create the code to get out. They will have to go around in teams of two, so that if one person is tagged, they can make it back to the glade. Once a team finds a letter, they will go back to the glade and write the letter on their map of the church. Try to have as many words as teams of two so that each team will find a different word and they won’t miss any, although more or less is fine to, it just means that they will have multiple of some words, or have to find other words after. If each team of two is assigned a room to search in it will be good because then they’ll have a word for each team and they won’t be confused by getting random letters from different sectors and having to keep track of which phase they found them in. The runners cannot kill the grievers.

Nighttime: this is when the grievers come out and change the letters in the rooms. The runners should be in the glade, although the doors will close at the start of the night and if anybody is left outside, they will have to try and run from the grievers, and if stung during the night will be out of the game and can just sit in the glade.

Make a day phase about 10-15 minutes and a night phase 5-10 minutes (as long as it takes for the letters to be replaced).

Once everyone is satisfied that they know what their word is, have them put all their words together and try to discover the code. For example, groups could have the words: created, in, God, the, beginning, earth, and, the, the, heavens; which would unscramble to: in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, although if the words are more even its better because otherwise one group will get beginning and one group will get in.

Once the runners have discovered the code they must find out where the griever hole is and get at least one person to a designated leader who is the “code input.” They must tell their code to the code input and then the grievers will be shut down, and the runners win. If all of the runners get stung going to the griever hole, the grievers win.

Added by
peggy
on 4 August 2021