Holloway
Holloway is a cooperative maze that only opens for a team that talks. Your group steps into a shifting labyrinth to find glowing sigils, none of which will lift for a single pair of hands — so you split up, call to each other across the walls, and describe what you see. Roughly once a minute the house rearranges itself, wiping the map in your head, and the only way anyone leaves is together.
Goal
Make a team's verbal coordination visible: how they share what only they can see, keep each other oriented when the situation changes, and regroup after a disruption. A calm, no-fail co-op task — no jump scares, no way to lose a player — that suits teams who don't usually play games.
Materials
Instructions
Preparation & setup
- Get the group on a voice call — the whole game is people talking to each other.
- Everyone picks a name and steps into the Study; the first one through becomes the keeper of the door.
- Controls: move with WASD, look with the mouse (click to capture the cursor, Esc to release), press E to interact.
Running it, step by step
- Open the hallway. When the team is ready, the keeper opens a doorway into the maze and everyone walks in.
- Explore in pairs. Sigils won't lift for one person, so head into the dark in twos and stay in earshot. Press F to send up a flare and call everyone back to you.
- Mark your way. There's no minimap. Drop glowing way-lights with Q to remember a route, and press Q beside one to pick it back up and reuse it.
- Mind the shifts. Roughly once a minute the house rearranges — walls rise and sink, and your mental map is now wrong. Find each other, then read the corridors from scratch.
- Seal the door. Carry each sigil back to the Study and set it into the great seal. When the last drops in, the front door opens and the whole team walks out together.
Debrief questions
- How did you keep each other oriented when the walls moved?
- What made the difference between a clear callout and a confusing one?
- Who took on wayfinding, and did that just happen or get agreed?
- Where does "the map in our head is suddenly wrong" mirror a real change our team has navigated?
Variations & tips
- Two and up: works from a pair, so it fits a one-on-one as well as a full team.
- Multiple runs: each run is different and never repeats — run two and watch coordination improve, which makes a great debrief point.
- Add the evidence: for $30 the Team Building Bot produces a Team Dynamics Map, a Pressure Response Profile and a Key Moments analysis. Opt-in; a mirror for the team, never a dossier for the boss.
Attachments
- 01c-study-seal.png
- 04-sigil.png
- 05-gate.png
- holloway.jpg
Background
Holloway is part of the Superglue game library — browser-based team games for remote and hybrid groups. Free to play with a free account.
Run it here: https://playsuperglue.com/games/holloway