Have you ever seen a dad taking care of a kid?

In most people’s mind, fathers take care of their children = “irresponsible”. But in Huddersfield, UK, there is such a father, in the process of taking care of his children not only very good, and by the way, also designed a board game.

Ideas at the dinner table

Dan is a 45-year-old father of three with a happy family life. In 2020, a sudden outbreak forced the children to stop school, and Dan had to stay at home with the children.

One day, Dan was doing his homework with his daughter Cora. Since COVID-19, children have lived the same life every day: eat, do homework, play, sleep. They can’t see their friends; they can’t breathe the fresh air outside. Dan was distressed to see Cora turn into a captive bird. He thought quickly and said to Cora, “Hey, do you want to play a board game?” “But Dad, we play board games every day…” “How about playing a board game of our own this time?”

And so it all began

Using Cora‘s favorite role-playing game style, they set out to create a fantasy world akin to Dungeons & Dragons. Designing characters, making up stories… Cora and Dan are trapped in a father-daughter fantasy.

A light bulb came on

After the Epiphany shared some details on Facebook, an artist named Gary King painted Cora‘s photo and, incidentally, painted a cover. It was this cover that made Dan realize that this could be a publishable board game.

With Kim‘s help, Cora‘s drawings came to life, and they even worked together to create a trailer for the game. From there, CoraQuest‘s popularity snowballed.

In order to get more attention and support, they created an online demo where players could suggest changes. The official website has spread to countries including the United States, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Canada, with thousands of children participating in the design of the game. They made all kinds of characters, abilities, treasure cards…

The original target was £12,060, which was the cost of 400 sets of the game, but it exceeded expectations just 40minutes after the game went live. In a crowdfunding campaign that just ended, the game raised £150,000.

Cora’s Test

This is a role-playing game suitable for 1-4 people and over 6 years old. You will play a hero, exploring with your companions, avoiding traps, fighting monsters, and finally saving a dwarf named Kevin. There are three stages in each round: the action stage, the monster stage and the countdown stage. In the action phase, the player activates the hero and encounters actions such as moving, attacking, searching, and exchanging items.

When the player is attacking, he needs to roll a dice. Symbol represents success and blank represents failure. If the player has not beaten the monster, the character card will be turned to the other side until the next roll is successful. Each character has its own personality (i.e., skills), such as the ability to roll the dice again while attacking. The name, health and action points of the game can be customized:

In the monster phase, each monster must be activated and attack nearby characters or move a specific number of steps (depends on the action point of the monster).

The game also has the biggest Boss, the spider, who is a constant threat to the player. In the countdown phase, the big Boss spider will appear, and be ready to hunt you down at any time.

Why is it so popular?

Every game is unique, which makes players very excited. Some netizens said, “Never found KS so useful.”

Sword girl was the first character they created. “Later, many people joined the creation of Sword girl, which has also become a popular character in the game.” Dan told us.

“The treasure card hedgehog in the game was drawn by an American boy, named Raya.” Dan pointed to these cards, like all were his treasures. In the game, you can create your own character, your own weapon, print it out, and then fight.

This is a fantasy adventure exclusively for you. After the game landed on KS, it was received high praise from a large number of elementary and junior high school students. After all, until now, elementary schools in some countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom are still closed. And some parents have been forced by their children to pay to go out and talk to others. This game is a gift sent by God to save them.

After the game becomes popular, Dan and Cora boarded the major news platforms. Dan told us, “I never thought that the title of board game designer would fall on me. But during the quarantine, everything is too boring, we need something fresh.” However, the success of the game did not arouse Dan’s ambitions. I don’t want to be a full-time game designer, and I hope CoraQuest can be acquired by publishers.

One of the parents played the game with her seven-year-old son with ADHD. The parent said that this was the only game her son had finished playing. There was no anger or anxiety during the game, but the whole game was played happily.

After learning that the game was so popular, Cora jumped up excitedly. “Cora and I will make a video about Lego next, but I don’t know if I can do it well,” Dan said.

The Master also joined the creation!

In addition to children from all over the world, even real game designers have joined the creation of this world.

The designer Jerry Hawthorne, who has designed well-known children’s adventure board games such as The Way of the Man and the Mouse and The Knights of the Doll, paid attention to this game and added his own characters in this adventure.

This is very meaningful to us. Because we are not only fans of Jerry, but as we hoped, he created his own adventure world based on CoraQuest. And these have also appeared on KS crowdfunding.

“We hope that this can stimulate everyone’s creativity and express themselves through art and writing, even if you do not do well, you are not ashamed.”

This game made Dan and Cora celebrities. Their games landed in crowdfunding, and TV interviews followed.

Now, they are busy answering people’s doubts about the game. In Dan‘s vision, he still has many lists of people to thank. The game will soon appear on the tables of so many countries, which Dan never dreamed of.

“We did a big deal, really.” Dan told his daughter.