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Bored dad and 8-year-old daughter create new game in lockdown that’s now worth £125k
Can’t wait to play CoraQuest!
A mental health nurse and his daughter developed a family-friendly fantasy game to have a fun break from homeschooling, and the product is now worth £125,000.
Eight-year-old Cora Hughes and dad, Dan from Huddersfield first began developing the game at the start of Covid back in spring 2020, at the kitchen table between home school lessons.
CoraQuest is a family-friendly dungeon game that sees heroes fight their way through quests, rescuing people and collecting treasures along the way. It features the likes of Wizard Woman, Crossbow Dude, Sword Girl, as well as a host of grumpy goblins, gremlins and orcs.
Dan shared the game on Facebook and eventually Gary King, a professional artist, got involved, colouring the pictures that Cora drew.
The post gathered big support and children added their own drawings, making Dan realise it could be a game others could enjoy.
Dan told Yorkshire Live: “Within weeks the project snowballed.
“Videos and play-testing happened online and over twenty kids from Britain, the USA, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Canada and Australia contributed artwork which has now been made into gorgeous looking prototypes.
“When the game launched on Kickstarter on February 1st, it unexpectedly smashed through its £12,060 target in 45 minutes and has gone from strength to strength.
“Now Cora and I are now looking forward to getting the game manufactured later this year.”
Cora said: “Dad got bored of learning about the Romans every day, so we did something different.
“We wanted to make a dungeon crawling game we could both enjoy. And then we realised that it was actually really good so we started to make it into a real board game.
“We really want it to be a fun thing for families to be part of creating themselves, so we’ve set it up so you can create your own characters and artwork, or you can play with ours straight out of the box.”
Dan added: “It all just started as a bit of a fun home learning project- some creative writing, a bit about probability with dice rolls, lots of art and a bit of IT.
“A friend, Gary King, made a joke box cover on Facebook in August and since then the whole thing has just gathered pace with loads of people jumping in wanting to be part of it.
“As we began receiving kids’ drawings of monsters and putting them up on our gallery, they were just so adorable.
“I’m not a soppy man, but to feel the support and enthusiasm of the community supporting us in this very special way, my heart is pretty much exploding.”
The pair are super excited about the opportunities creating CoraQuest will bring.
Cora said: “I can’t believe it! It’s amazing. I can’t believe so many people want to play our game.”
Dan added: “It’s absolutely amazing. We really weren’t expecting it. We hoped we might just get to our target by February 18th , but this is incredible.
“Cora’s jumping for joy. It’s fantastic to think that our game will be in so many family’s homes.”
The Kickstarter campaign finished on February 18th, but you can still give a late pledge here. It’s already been backed by over 5,000 people raising more than £150,000.