THE GREAT GOTHAM CHALLENGE
OUR INDUSTRY-DEFINING FLAGSHIP EXPERIENCE
Still want to learn more? Listen to GIL Founders Ryan Patch and Jon Seale on Reality Escape Pod, talking about The Great Gotham Challenge.
THE CHALLENGE \\\
Bootstrap an entirely new genre of “location-based puzzle hunt” that redefines what an immersive urban adventure event can be.
OUR APPROACH \\\
This was the product that started it all for us. Two friends wondered what would happen if we blurred the lines between New York City and the game that we run on its streets?
We’re grappling with this question ever since 2009, and what has emerged in the intervening time has become our signature approach, opening portals to new worlds and surprising audiences with “how’d-they-do-that” moments of awe.
Our experiences are designed to mystify even the people who have already done events “like” a scavenger hunt or escape room before. With us, you’ll experience a challenge you won’t be able to compare to anything else.
Instead of building experiences inside four walls, we design on top of the real world. History, chance encounters, live performance, puzzles, food, and technology collide into something that feels less like an event and more like a temporary reality you’ve stumbled into.
We’re proud of how we’ve built The Great Gotham Challenge from an idea into a thriving business that can bring together dozens, hundreds, or thousands of players at a time.
GGC has a dedicated public audience (who sell out our new games within hours), a series of “off-the-rack” challenges available to book for private events at any time, and hosts dozens of elite tech companies and top-tier finance firms for custom events every year.
This evolution didn’t happen by accident; it’s the result of relentlessly refining our approach, scaling immersion without diluting it, and proving that thoughtfully designed experiences can be both artistically ambitious and operationally bulletproof.
You can see some of the best press we’ve gotten here, and read more at The Great Gotham Challenge’s website.
The Great Gotham Challenge set the template: give participants agency, trust them to be smart, and let discovery drive momentum. No hand-holding. No obvious paths. Just layered systems, elegant clues, and moments of delight hiding in plain sight.
That philosophy still defines everything we build. Whether for public audiences, private teams, or bespoke commissions, our work traces back to that original experiment: curiosity first, immersion always, and a belief that the most powerful experiences don’t ask people to escape the world, they ask them to see what lies underneath it.
Press has consistently framed The Great Gotham Challenge as more than a scavenger hunt: Room Escape Artist praised it as “a fantastic way to be guided around the city,” calling out the “VIP pass for curated wonder” feeling, while No Proscenium likened the experience to “glam DaVinci Code energy” built from live actors, custom clues, and NYC’s most iconic structures. ARGNet highlighted the “sheer audacity” of the moments pulled off year after year, and author Eric Berlin put it plainly: delivering something truly “epic” is hard — and GGC delivers
