SCRAM: Hide and Seek

Hide and seek, played across a real map with real legs. SCRAM splits your group into hunters and runners, starts a clock, and turns a street, park, campus or campsite into the board — your phone just keeps score. Runners scatter during a head start; then the hunt begins, and the runners' only warning system is a clock they can't consult.

The balance is information, and it's deliberately unfair. Every few minutes the hunters get a ping: every runner's location appears on their map, stamped with how long ago it was — a trail of cooling breadcrumbs. Between pings the hunters guess, while each team sees its own players live; runners never see hunters at all. Stray outside the play zone and, after 30 seconds, you become visible live until you get back in. Tags happen in person — the caught runner taps 'I got tagged' — and the last runners standing when time runs out win.

The details show it was designed by people who have actually hidden behind things: alerts reach you with the phone locked (pings, the head start ending, the zone shrinking, tags), they buzz instead of ringing so your pocket doesn't betray you, and a team radio lets each side coordinate without the other side listening in. The host sets round length, head start and ping frequency — including none at all, for purists.

Money and privacy are both stated cleanly, so credit both: joining games is free; hosting your own is a one-time purchase with no subscription; and your location is shared only during a round, only with your game's players. The app's own closing advice deserves repeating: play somewhere safe, mind traffic, stay off private property. Reception so far is middling (3.4 stars, 10K+ downloads) — but the concept is the freshest thing in this batch.