Case study: Questo city exploration game
Questo is a global travel app that launched in 2017 in Bucharest, Romania. It creates city exploration games for travellers and locals that combine interesting facts about the city with treasure-hunt-style clues and challenges. Over the past few years, Questo has expanded to over 100 cities on four continents.
I started working with Questo because they were after a Sydney local to come up with an exciting quest with the theme of ‘Ghosts of Sydney: The Haunted Stories’. Sounded right up my alley, so I jumped at the chance!
My involvement
For this project, I wrote all of the copy that participants will see in the app:
- The fictional narrative that runs through the story
- Challenges you need to solve to get your next clue
- Directions between the checkpoints (without using street names, which made it tricky)
- Interesting facts about each location
Without giving too much away, I found some fascinating (and super creepy) stories about the most haunted buildings in Sydney. Like me, you’ve probably walked past these buildings hundreds of times and never paid them much notice. Did you know there’s a hotel in The Rocks where the ghost of a murdered sailor appears at the foot of the bed when there’s a woman sleeping in the room alone? Eeek!
Outcome
The quest is now live in test mode and I’d love you to try it out if it sounds like your kind of thing. It starts at the Hyde Park Barracks and will take around 80-110 minutes to complete, depending on how good you are at solving clues!
To play, download the Questo app from whatever app store you use and look for a game called ‘Ghosts of Sydney: The Haunting Stories’. Let me know if you enjoyed it!
