A new island-based company, Go Quest Adventures, has plans to turn city streets around the UK into adventure playgrounds.

The company’s founders, Kimberley and Juan Kniveton, describe the ‘Quests’ as ‘city walking adventure meets carefully crafted treasure hunt with an urban escape room twist’.

The ‘Quest Master’ designs the hidden trails around a city or town. Teams of up to five people unlock the trail by finding clues, solving puzzles and completing team challenges. The trails are designed to not only highlight a town’s attractions, but allow players to find hidden gems whilst learning some fun facts and history and earning points along the way. Those conquering a Quest and placing on the city leaderboards can enter into a monthly draw for prizes.

Go Quest launched in its first cities last week: here in Douglas and in Nottingham.

Kimberley Kniveton said that the Douglas Quest was designed not only for locals but for visitors too. She said: ‘The company has launched just ahead of the TT and hopes to give visitors a fun experience to take part in during their stay while on island, showcasing what the island’s capital has to offer. It provides a new way in which to explore cities and towns through an app on their mobile device.’

The Douglas Quest is 3.4km and takes in places including the railway station, St George’s Churchyard, Government House, the Jubilee Clock.

It was Juan and Kimberly’s love of travelling and learning about new places combined with Kim’s love of puzzles and the rise in popularity of escape rooms that gave them the idea for the app. While there are similar treasure hunt style games in the market, none combined both aspects with the ease and technology of an app, so Go Quest Adventure was born.

They spent more than 18 months in development with London-based agency CodeLeap and the app is free on both the App Store and GooglePlay.

Although Kim and Juan started the venture during the middle of the pandemic, they knew that once people started to travel again, they wanted them to have a fun and engaging way to not only see new places but to explore their own home towns from a different perspective.

Kimberley said: ‘I think people are so busy rushing around they fail to notice the fun and beautiful things all around them. Go Quest Adventures offers an engaging and interactive way to not only get to know a place but to see things in a whole new way.’

As well as Douglas and Nottingham they also have Quests in Inverness and Edinburgh in the final testing stage and due to be launched, with Chester and Liverpool launching next month. By the end of the year they will have Quests in 12 cities around the UK.

In addition to their prebuilt city Quests, like the one in Douglas, the company can custom design Quests for organisations, schools, universities and special events. They can be used for team building, or school induction activity, or as icebreakers for conferences and events.

Kimberley said that actually designing the Quests was also very rewarding.

‘If you like to go around and you like to explores new things, it’s tremendous fun,’ she said.

‘I spend two weeks in a place getting to know it first, then we design the puzzles.

‘The feedback we get from the locals is: “We found some places we hadn’t seen before and learnt things about our city which we didn’t know. It’s just amazing the things you just don’t see, even in the places where you live”.’

You can book a Quest in Douglas at www.goquestadventures.com.