Go Quest

Gamified city exploration with multiplayer quests

Go Quest Adventures runs self-guided treasure hunts across UK cities. CodeLeap is their engineering team, building and looking after the whole product: the mobile app players use on the day, the website where quests are bought, and the Django backend and CMS the team runs it all from.

What we did CodeLeap built the mobile app, the quest-selling website and the payment system as one product, including live multiplayer that turns a solo activity into a social occasion, and the Quest Master narrator woven through the interface to give the product its voice.

Go Quest Adventures turns a city into a game board, guiding players through self-led City QUESTS built from clues, puzzles and hidden routes that lead them to places they would otherwise walk past. Over the course of a year, CodeLeap developed the mobile app, the website that sells the quests and the payment system that connects the two, delivering a complete commercial product rather than a game in isolation. The experience is held together by the Quest Master, a guiding character woven through the interface who gives the whole product its voice.

Product features

Live multiplayer

Players team up with friends or compete against other groups in real time, collaborating on challenges or racing to solve them first. Adding live multiplayer transformed the product from a solo activity into a social occasion, which is the form in which people are far more likely to buy it.
Story-driven experience

The design and user experience are built around the Quest Master, a character who leads players through their adventure and whose presence runs through the interface. Giving the product a narrator rather than a set of instructions is what makes it feel like an adventure instead of a checklist.
Interactive interface

The app provides clear instructions, real-time feedback and straightforward navigation, which matters enormously when the person using it is standing on a street corner in an unfamiliar city trying to work out where to go next.
City QUEST marketplace

A dedicated website lets customers browse and purchase quests, receiving an invitation code after purchase that grants them and their friends access in the app. Separating the point of sale from the play experience keeps the app itself focused on the adventure.
Automated payments and invoicing

Payments are processed securely through an automated system supporting PayPal alongside credit and debit cards, with instant confirmations and invoices issued to the customer. For a product sold directly to consumers, a payment flow that completes without friction is as commercially important as the game itself.
Content management interface

Administrators have a dedicated interface for creating and managing City QUESTS, updating content and tracking user activity, which allows the client to launch new cities and refine existing quests without returning to us for development.
Leaderboard

On finishing a quest, players can see how their time and score compare with others, which gives the experience a competitive edge and a reason to come back for another city.

Challenge

The client had a clear vision of an app that would offer an exciting new way to explore the cities people love, leading users along a hidden path of clues and puzzles while earning points as they went. Delivering it required three quite different pieces of work to come together. The game experience itself had to be genuinely engaging and reliable in the field, where a player is outdoors, moving, and dependent on the app to tell them what to do. The commercial layer needed a secure payment system capable of charging a participation fee and getting groups of players into the right quest afterwards. And the whole thing had to be operable by the client's own team, since a product whose content can only be changed by its developers cannot grow.

Solution

Within a year, CodeLeap delivered the mobile app, the website and the payment system as a single working product. The website functions as a marketplace where customers browse and buy City QUESTS, with payments processed securely through PayPal and card, after which an invitation code admits the buyer and their friends into the quest in the app. The app then guides players along a hidden path of clues, puzzles and challenges, with live multiplayer for groups and a leaderboard to compare results afterwards. The Quest Master character carries the narrative throughout, and the administrative interface lets the client manage quests, update content and monitor activity independently. The app is available on iOS and Android.

Tech stack

The tech chosen was our speciality, enabling fast development of performant user interfaces and a reliable infrastructure. Go Quest Adventures is available for both iOS and Android.

Frontend: React Native (iOS & Android), React (web marketplace and admin interface)
Backend: Python, Django, PostgreSQL
Hosting: AWS
Integrations: PayPal, credit and debit card payments