The Mystery Walks in Cornwall are produced by iWalk Cornwall - a Cornish family business. Both the app and mystery walks are entirely produced by ourselves without any grants or similar costs to the taxpayer. The production of each mystery walk is a mammoth piece of work which takes us several months.

We carefully design each route to give an enjoyable walk whilst making best of the physical clues available and also making the path it takes not easy to anticipate in advance (otherwise it wouldn't be much of a mystery).

Each mystery walk involves many rounds of site visits to plan, test and refine the content. The directions element builds on over a decade of experience of writing directions for the iWalk Cornwall walking app but needs some extra considerations to cope with the break in the flow when stopping to solve a puzzle.

Each mystery walk has a unique immersive story which is fictional but has its themes rooted in over a decade of historical research for the iWalk Cornwall countryside walks app.

Each story is illustrated with imagery optimised for visibility in the high glare of the outdoor environment and sound effects tailored to each story. Each mystery walk also has music which is arranged, performed and recorded by us.

All the audio and image content is carefully compressed to minimise the size of the mystery walk download as internet bandwidth in Cornwall is variable and some visitors may be using their mobile data for this.

We devise the puzzles to cover a spread of skills (e.g. some involve words, some numbers, some logic, some spotting things, some reaction times) both so they are varied and so members of a group can contribute with their strengths. For every puzzle, we also devise a series of hints so everyone can solve the puzzle.

For every physical clue, we take a backup photo which often involves multiple visits to get each in the best lighting conditions (some are clearer in bright sunlight but for others this can result in too much contrast).

The way the puzzles come together to form the overall mystery is unique to each mystery walk. We often need to extend the functionality of app itself to accommodate this.

Once the mystery walk has been purchased. the app has been designed to be able to run entirely offline with no internet connection as in some Cornish fishing villages located in steep-sided valleys there is no phone signal. We therefore also need to create a downloadable, zoomable map for each of the mystery walks.

After we've finished testing it ourselves, we field test each mystery walk on a range of testers with different backgrounds and levels of experience, refining the puzzles and clues each time before we consider it ready for release.

The mystery walks are designed as a social activity to be carried out in a family unit or with friends. They provide entertainment for the group for a less than a typical escape room price for just one person, and the duration of the entertainment is also significantly longer. They also provide the health benefits of a 2-4 mile walk in the fresh air without it even feeling like "exercise".

The proceeds from the Mystery Walks (net of the 47% markup applied by Apple/Google) go towards to their own upkeep, and also supporting our work to help improve the maintenance of Cornwall's footpaths (getting obstructions cleared, updating vegetation cutting schedules etc).

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