V&A Secret Seekers

This beautiful building is even more fun than you’d think. Meet colourful characters and crack crafty puzzles to conquer its secrets.

Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, V&A’s digital team wanted to provide families a fun activity to play together.

The onsite game – accessed through the browser – tells the story of the building and its evolution since Prince Albert’s original vision of a ‘cultural quarter’ in 1852.

CLIENT
Victoria & Albert Museum

TECH
HTML 5 for web & mobile
Custom CMS

ROLE
Creative Director
(Preloaded)

At the heart of the game are 10 characters plucked from the V&A’s rich history. Captain Fowke invites players to appreciate feats of engineering, Madam Celeste is more concerned with comfort (find her in the Cafe!) and Jim the dog is the real boss of the place.

Activity is spread across eight areas of the museum where players must use logic and looking to solve short puzzles. It might take 15 minutes to complete a couple of puzzles but more dedicated teams can play for hours, unlocking Achievements as they progress through every location.

Paper prototyping during the Creative Sprint

A Creative Sprint held at the V&A allowed us to discuss early concepts and quickly test puzzle-types with museum visitors. The large volume of content was developed collaboratively and is served to the game via a simple CMS.

Research by Frankly Green & Webb shows museum visitors are more likely to go online than download an app, so the game can be accessed on a majority of smartphones through the browser. In the first three months over 2,000 visitors to the V&A accessed the online game. For those in any doubt, Jim the dog is proving the most popular character with children.

Play for yourself: www.vam.ac.uk/seekers

Further reading on project development and the creative thinking:

Work in progress – from prototype through Alpha to final delivery