This Free Scavenger Hunt Makes Comic and Anime Conventions so Much Better

When I bought tickets for Anime NYC, I worried that the chaos would be overwhelming for my daughters’ first convention. I started my own con-going tradition a decade ago with New York Comic Con, and I’ve attended countless conventions since, but Anime NYC was my twin 15-year-old daughters’ first time going to an event so massive. To help, I planned to download a scavenger hunt to help guide them through the convention hall, but I couldn’t find one anywhere online. So I stayed up late the night before Anime NYC, and I made an anime convention scavenger hunt myself.

Like New York Comic Con, Anime NYC is held at the Javits Center, a 3.3 million square foot convention hall. Anime NYC was filled with over 100,000 people in 2024, the largest crowd yet in its seven-year history, and if you’ve been to a con before, you know how overwhelming and exhausting they can be: Countless events, panels, booths, and advertisements compete for your attention as you walk for miles through crowds. They’re not beginner-friendly experiences, and Anime NYC was no exception.

My goal for the scavenger hunt was to give our exploration more focus and to distract from the fatigue, and it worked. It made the experience much less overwhelming for my family—and a lot more fun. I might never do another convention without one.

Customize this comic convention scavenger hunt

You can download this comic and anime convention scavenger hunt for free to use at your next convention, or use it as inspiration to make your own. The scavenger hunt is broken down into three sections:

• The first section has easier searches worth one point each. With a few bonuses involved, there are a maximum of 15 points possible in the first section of the scavenger hunt.

• The second section has challenges that are more involved or need more social interaction with strangers, and are worth two points each. With bonuses, there are a possible 20 points in the second section.

• And the last section involves taking videos of group members more actively engaging with the community, each worth 5 points. With bonuses, this section is worth up to 25 points.

The scavenger hunt format is malleable to most comic, anime, and gaming conventions, so you should customize it for your group and interests. For example, you may want to swap in other comic or video game characters, or raise or lower the difficulty levels based on age (or nerdiness). My family is Black and likes to notice such characters in anime, so one of our options included asking strangers if they can name five Black anime characters.

How long does the scavenger hunt take?

For adults, you can expect the convention scavenger hunt to take around 4-6 hours to finish. With kids, you can expect the search to be slower depending on how much walking they can handle. My family spent around six hours at Anime NYC, and out of a total possible 60 points, the winning team scored 48 points against the losing team’s 47.

Credit: Jordan Calhoun / Lifehacker

How to make your own convention scavenger hunt

Of course, you can make your own scavenger hunt to be as unique as you want. The simplest scavenger hunts just need a list of items to find or tasks to accomplish, along with some basic rules around teams, time limits, and prizes. If your group is competitive, a few common questions to consider include:

• Whether teams can make alliances

• Whether teams can sabotage each other

• Whether teams can spend money for clues (This was a particular point of contention during my family’s scavenger hunt, as my team paid for an autograph from an anime voice actor for a bonus point.)

• And a pre-agreed tie breaker

Scavenger hunts are a great way to organize conventions

One of my favorite productivity quotes is, “There is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.” It reminds me that any large accomplishment can be made less daunting and more manageable by breaking into smaller tasks. I try to keep “one bite at a time” in mind whether training for a marathon, writing a book, or convincing my daughters to love conventions as much as I do: If I organize your tasks and focus on the one in front of me, the goal will happen along the way. Ultimately, a scavenger hunt can function as a great task management tool—essentially a checklist, but disguised for fun—and I plan to use them more often for events like vacations, museums, and trips. And when I can’t find a good one online, I hope to find time to keep building them on my own.