Tiny entrepreneur Cora Hughes is on her way to making her first million – at the tender age of eight.

Cora and dad Dan have been left amazed after their home-school lockdown project – a board game called CoraQuest – smashed its £12,000 Kickstarter target within 45 minutes and now tops a staggering £80,000.

The Huddersfield-based dad-and-daughter duo hope the game will become an international hit.

Cora said: “It’s amazing. It would be nice to see it sold in shops.”

Cora and Dan, 44, an NHS nurse, launched CoraQuest, a family board game, on Kickstarter on February 1 at 5pm.

They needed £12,060 to be pledged by February 18 so they could afford to make 1,000 copies of the game but were stunned when they hit that target in just 45 minutes.

Well over 2,700 pledges have been made and the total has gone through the £80,000 barrier.

Cora Hughes and dad Dan

The game began as a “bit of fun”, a break from worksheets provided by school during the Covid lockdown but as they played the game a few times Cora and Dan realised they had created a hit.

Cora created all the original artwork and soon recruited a small battalion of kids from around the world who have drawn the gremlins, goblins, spiders and orcs who inhabit the dungeons of CoraQuest.

A professional artist Gary King – dubbed “the Chief Colourer In” – coloured in the kids’ drawings and the project began to snowball.

Dan said: “We needed £12,000 to get the game manufactured but within 45 minutes we had met the target. Then even more people started getting excited and it went a bit viral within the gaming world.”

A prototype of CoraQuest

Like all families Dan said they were finding lockdown tough but CoraQuest had proved a distraction.

“It’s like having two full-time jobs home-schooling and working a full-time job but it’s brought a bit of joy into our lives and a little bit of creativity,” he said. “It’s certainly helped the lockdown go a bit easier.

“If a publisher approaches us we will certainly talk to them but we are just happy to get the game in people’s hands.”