Gaming maestro Cora Hughes celebrated her ninth birthday by signing a deal to publish a board game she and her dad invented in lockdown.

CoraQuest was a home-school lockdown project that generated worldwide attention and made Cora a media star.

The Huddersfield family created the adventure game as a distraction from schoolwork and set up a Kickstarter fund to raise £12,000 to make the game a reality.

They smashed the target in just 45 minutes and went on to raise a staggering £156,000.

Now the ingenious dad and daughter double act have signed a deal with Bright Eye Games which will see CoraQuest hit the shelves.

The Kickstarter campaign launched on Dan’s 45th birthday and he described it as “possibly the best birthday I’ve ever had.”

And then the publishing deal was announced on Cora’s big day, making it a double day of celebration for the family.

More than 5,000 backers supported the Kickstarter fundraiser, pledging to pay £30 for the game.

Dan said that without the Kickstarter the publishing deal wouldn’t have been possible and he thanked everyone for their support.

CoraQuest – thousands joined the community

He said Bright Eye Games was a new publishing company looking to expand into the family games market.

He added: “When the Kickstarter ended we were in the very enviable position of being approached by a number of different publishers, some of them very big names in the industry.

“We have gone with Bright Eye Games for a number of reasons, most of which can be boiled down into one sentence – they ‘get’ what CoraQuest is about.

“They understand that we don’t just want CoraQuest to be a game, we want it to be a community. We want to encourage people to take what we’ve created and adapt and share it with others for free.

“We want the box of cards, dice and cardboard to be a catalyst for creativity as much as it is for fun. In short, we feel with them CoraQuest will be in safe hands.”

The Kickstarter version of the game will be published first, a couple of months before it goes on general sale.