Thursday December 17th 2020
Bryony Primrose from Dalkeith designed the Secret Spy Service
A play-at-home escape room game that was designed by a Dalkeith schoolgirl will soon be on sale raising money for Edinburgh Children’s Hospital charity.
Twelve year old Bryony Primrose won the 12-14s category of a national competition to design an escape room and now her design has now been turned into a home escape room kit in time for Christmas. The escape room game is called Secret Spy Service and players must assist Commander Bryony on a top secret mission to capture the Cryptic Gang. The game combines a range of puzzles including maths, spelling, constructing and deciphering and is recommended for ages 12 and up.
Bryony said:
“My dad saw the competition online and thought I would like to enter as I have completed a couple of escape rooms. Although I didn’t think I would win, I decided to give it a try anyway. I was very surprised when I got the email saying that I won, but I’m very happy that I did win because it was a lot of fun to design and all the money goes to a really good cause.”
Bryony’s chosen charity is Edinburgh Children’s Hospital.
“My chosen charity is one close to the hearts of my family. We lost my brother 7 years ago and the Edinburgh Children’s Hospital were very helpful to us while trying to deal with the loss. We have done a couple of things in the past to raise money for them so it was quite an easy decision.”
The design an escape room competition was organised by Cheltenham based social enterprise, Create on the Square, which aims to “encourage creative enterprise in the local community”, as a positive response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“When the lockdown was called in April, all of our projects were immediately shut down, so we decided to run a competition to give children something to do during lockdown, and also to raise money for charities in this difficult year. We were very pleased with the response from across the country and hope the games will raise plenty of money for charity now” said Pete George, Director, Create on the Square CIC
The competition asked children, in two age categories, 12-14 and under-12s, to come up with a design for an escape room on two a4 sheets of paper. The competition judges especially liked the idea behind the story, the thoroughness of the puzzle suggestions, and the thought that was put into making it appropriate for the age group in Bryony’s design and unanimously awarded her the winner in the 12-14s category.
Bryony’s design was then handed over to the escape room designers at Escape Rooms Cheltenham, who have given their time freely to create and test the game.
“It has been great to bring Bryony’s ideas to life, and be able to include elements that are personal to her in the game. We’re really excited to launch this new game, especially for such a great cause.”
The escape room game is on sale on Escape Rooms Cheltenham website with 100% of the sale price of £10 going to Bryony’s chosen charity, Edinburgh Children’s Hospital.
Tweet Share on Facebook
