Picture it: a room packed with people who love games, a live musician and game stations buzzing in every corner, an aerialist spinning on silks overhead, and one wonderfully over-the-top villain, the Bad Vibes Wizard, who has trapped the musician and refuses to let the party start!
That was Toronto Games Week closing night. When CrowdParty had the opportunity to sponsor the event, we couldn't say no!
Here's how we turned a venue full of strangers into one community with a single mission: free the musician and beat the Wizard!
Spotlight: Toronto Games Week
Started in 2019 by Marie LeBlanc Flanagan and Jim Munroe, Toronto Games Week is a week-long, city-wide celebration of playful arts and games culture. It is not corporate. Dozens of independent creators and organizations host their own events under one umbrella, powered by volunteers, with most events free and open to all.
The closing night brought that community into one room at Demo Room, the 16,000 sq ft creative venue on Toronto's waterfront, with support from Interactive Ontario as part of their 25th anniversary. A crowd of people who make games for a living, all set to play together. That was the challenge, and exactly why we said yes!
Explore Toronto Games Week →The closing night at a glance
Try CrowdParty for FreeWhy we teamed up with Toronto Games Week
CrowdParty is at its best in a room full of people ready to have fun, so this was a natural team-up! TGW brought the community, the vibe, and the venue. We brought the games and the tech to turn that the event into something everyone could have fun with!
How the night played out
Trivia: Name the TGW Event!
We opened with trivia built straight from the events earlier in the week, asking players to name them. Anyone who'd been exploring all week had a head start, but the questions were accessible enough that newcomers could still climb the leaderboard!
Scavenger Hunt: Snap a pic of the Toronto-made Game!
Next we flipped to a scavenger hunt! Players had a grid of tiles, each with a prompt tied to one of the showcased Toronto games, and had to snap the right pics to fill it. It pulled everyone deeper into the floor and got people comparing boards with folks they had met two minutes earlier.
Trivia: Name the Toronto-made Game!
Halfway through, the games on the floor swapped out for a fresh set. Game two used the same format with all new answers based on the games that had just been introduced. It kept the regulars honest and rewarded anyone tracking how the room had changed!
Scavenger Hunt: TGW Organizers!
For the final game, we made it personal! The last scavenger hunt was filled with the names of the Toronto Games Week organizers, and players had to track each one down for a photo to claim the tile. It sent the whole room hunting down the people who built the week, which was equal parts hilarious and sweet!
Finale: EasyRaffle and Bad Vibes Wizard!
We closed with the raffle. Every player who had joined was automatically entered into the EasyRaffle, and because it supports up to 1000 participants, the entire venue was in the running with zero friction. One winner was drawn live on the big screen to take home the grand prize, a Nintendo Switch 2!
But the winner did not just grab a prize and sit down. They got the final quest of the night! Beat the Bad Vibes Wizard in a video game, projected huge for everyone to watch. The whole room had spent the night freeing the musician, and now one of their own had to land the finishing blow with the entire community cheering them on!
There's a special kind of rush right before a moment like that, and an even bigger one in the roar that comes after!
Prizes
The Nintendo Switch 2 stole the show, but the other round winners walked away with plenty too! All night, game winners walked away with Pokémon booster bundles, Amazon gift cards, and lifetime CrowdParty licenses. Some prizes were pure fun, some practical, and the licenses meant organizers left ready to host their own events using CrowdParty!
What it meant for the community
Communities are built on reasons to be in the same room. The closing night gave the Toronto game scene a shared memory to point back to!
It also put real tools straight into the hands of the people who keep this community running. TGW was full of people who host meetups, game nights, and socials on their own, so those lifetime licenses weren't just prizes. They were a bet that this community will keep playing together long after the lights come down!
Why CrowdParty shines at community events
No wizardry here, just a few things CrowdParty is genuinely great at:
- It gets a whole venue playing in seconds. With a single QR-scan the room is playing! No app downloads and accounts make it effortless.
- It runs a whole night from one place. Trivia, scavenger hunts, and a raffle all flowed from the same platform, so the four-game story arc never stalled for setup.
- It puts the joy on the big screen. Leaderboards, reveals, and the live raffle draw all land in real time so the whole room can react together. That's what gets the whole venue cheering!
- It's made to be shared. The same things that make CrowdParty fun at an event are what make people want to host their own.
CrowdParty Features We Used
We didn't just play one game with the crowd. We put together a few CrowdParty formats so the night kept moving and the crowd never sat still! Here's the one's we used:
Picture Trivia
We put the crowd's own world up on the big screen! Upload your images or generate them with AI, then switch on the blur effect so each picture reveals slowly while your group races to guess first! We used it to show off their games, their faces, and a few inside jokes, and the energy was instant.
Scavenger Hunt
We sent players roaming the venue with custom Scaveger Hunt tiles: find a game station, meet the TGW Organizers, snap the perfect photo! It got total strangers talking and turned the whole room into one big team chasing the same goals.
EasyRaffle
We closed the night with a raffle supporting up to 1000 people. Everyone scanned to enter in seconds, no paper tickets required, and we drew the winner live on the host screen to build anticipation right to the final moment!
Planning your own community event? Steal these tips!
- Give the night a story! The Bad Vibes Wizard storyline gave every game higher stakes than a leaderboard alone ever could.
- Customize the games to the event. Trivia and scavenger boards built from the real stations and real people on the floor got everyone exploring.
- Refresh as the night moves. When the showcased games rotated, the trivia rotated with them, so the energy never dipped.
- Save your best prize for the finale. Everyone has a reason to stay when the grand prize drops last!
- Send people home with the fun! Prizes that let winners host their own events keep the community playing
Want to throw a night like this for your own community? Try CrowdParty free at crowdparty.app and turn your next event into a game everyone plays together.
