Three ways to play — outdoors with nothing, indoors with phones, and with a group you are responsible for. Written because Quad Chase came out of a real interest in why chase games work, and that turned out to be worth writing down.
Freeze tag, blob tag, British Bulldog, sharks and minnows, octopus, line tag, shadow tag and more — with player counts, space needed and rough ages.
Organised around an argument: ordinary tag has a design flaw. The slowest child becomes "it" early, cannot catch anyone, and stays "it" in front of everybody. Every variant that survived on playgrounds fixes that in one of three ways, and knowing which is which is how you choose between them.
For a group indoors where everyone already has a phone. Phones as controllers on one shared screen, hidden-role games where the phone only deals the cards, and games where it is just a timer.
Sorted by the only question that matters — does it make people look at each other, or down? Includes the Wi-Fi setting that breaks half of these games, which almost nobody warns you about.
For teachers, camp counsellors and youth leaders: no-equipment games for a classroom, a hall, a field and the woods.
Built around what actually goes wrong, which is never the game — it is the joins. How fast it starts, whether it stops cleanly, and whether it leaves the group calm or busy. Plus mixed abilities, the child who will not join in, and how to bring everyone back down afterwards.
| If you have | Read |
|---|---|
| A field and a group of children | Tag games |
| A living room, a TV and friends | Phone party games |
| Twenty-eight children and twelve minutes | Camp and classroom |
| A wet lunchtime and no options left | Phone party games |
| Two people and something to dodge around | Tag games, the 1v1 entry |
Quad Chase is a browser game built on the twenty-second chase format — one evader, one chaser, a clock that ends the round whether or not anyone is caught. Working out why that format is so much better than plain tag meant looking properly at how chase games are actually played, and most of what we found was not written down anywhere useful.
So these guides are the notes. They recommend plenty of games we have nothing to do with, because a page that only pointed at our own game would not be worth your time.
If you want the game itself, it is free and needs no account — and the how to play page covers it properly.
PLAY QUAD CHASE