What happens when you hide little NFC creatures all over an offsite? People start talking, teaming up, and hunting together, even at night using flashlight.
Once a year, the OpenProject team gets together in person for our offsite and Passion Time. We talked about it in this blog article last week. As a company that works largely remotely and across different countries, these days are precious. They’re our chance to chat, share ideas over coffee, and spend time with the people behind the work packages.
This year, we added something new to the mix: the Creature Cards game. And it turned out to be one of the highlights of the event.
What are Creature Cards?
Creature Cards is a game created by the folks at Mysteryhack, originally built for the Chaos Communication Congress (39C3) and since played at events like the Gulaschprogrammiernacht in Karlsruhe.
The idea is simple and wonderfully nerdy: small creatures live on NFC cards. You scan a card with your phone, and the creature is added to your personal collection, your own little “Creaturedex.” Players can even design their own creatures, which get printed and flashed onto new cards.
At community events, the cards end up everywhere: on pillars, walls, tables, and lanyards. Our version was smaller, but the effect was the same. During our offsite, creature cards were tucked away in meeting rooms, near the coffee machine, on the charging stations, and even on the ceiling, just waiting to be found.
Creatures made by the OpenProject team
The fun started long before anyone packed their bags. In the weeks leading up to the offsite, the whole team got creative and designed the 38x38 pixel creatures themselves. Many of the designs drew on things close to our hearts: OpenProject itself, our company values, and the open source spirit we build on every day. So when the hunt began, people weren’t just collecting random cards. They were discovering their colleagues’ ideas and a little piece of what makes OpenProject who we are.
Image: Impressions from the creature cards hunt during the OpenProject offsite and Passion Time 2026. The team designed, hid and collected pixel-art creatures using NFC cards.
More than just a game
We expected a bit of fun on the side. What we didn’t expect was how quickly the game became a conversation starter.
Instead of the usual “So, what are you working on at the moment?”, people opened with “Have you found the one by the stairs yet?” or “Which creatures are you still missing?” Suddenly, colleagues who might otherwise have stayed in their familiar circles had a natural reason to approach each other. Comparing collections led to trading tips, which led to longer conversations, which often ended up somewhere completely different than creatures.
Hunting together
The real magic happened when people started teaming up. Completing the full collection on your own was hard, so small hunting groups formed naturally. Someone would share a hint, someone else would remember seeing a card in an unexpected place, and off they went together.
What made this special was who ended up hunting together. Many of these groups were made up of colleagues who rarely work together on a daily basis. Chasing down that one last missing creature was so much fun! The teams were very motivated and even crawling under a table looking for an NFC card.
Why it worked for us
Looking back, we think Creature Cards worked so well because it ticked a few important boxes. It was low-pressure, so you could join for five minutes between sessions or go all in. It created shared goals without forcing anyone into structured “team building.” It got people moving around the venue and into spaces and conversations they might have skipped. And it fit our culture: a playful, open, slightly geeky idea that came out of the open source and hacker community.
For a team that collaborates mostly online, these spontaneous cross-team connections matter a lot.
Thank you
A big thank you to the Mysteryhack team for creating such a creative and charming game, and for making it possible to organize one at our offsite. And of course, thanks to everyone who scanned, searched, traded hints, and made new connections along the way.
We’re already wondering which creatures will be hiding at our next offsite.
