About

Why tho?

I’ve always enjoyed puzzles but only started geeking out on escape rooms in 2019. I even created an escape room in our house for friends to come over to play… juuuust as we all went into lockdown. So I created Quarantini instead. I wanted to make something fun and free to help alleviate some of the boredom at a time when everyone was stuck at home and worried about finances. But it was also really good for me to have something to focus on when I was on furlough and feeling pretty useless.

When the Black Lives Matter movement came back into the headlines in May 2020, I - like a lot of people with white privilege I think - got something of a wake up call. This time, maybe because of all the extra time on my hands, the learning started going in about systemic injustice and violence against black lives - not just in the US but here in the UK, and not just in the long-gone past but within my lifetime, and now.

So, while these (very silly) games are still only a bit of free and lighthearted entertainment, if you enjoy them and can afford to, please consider supporting one of the many great charities that are working hard to reverse some of the deep-rooted inequalities still present in our society (whatever country you are in) or to your local food bank.

How tho?

The majority of each game is just a basic Squarespace website. Point, click, go to a new page. Unfortunately this also means the password mechanism is not quite as user-friendly as I’d like, but it works.

The interactive and draggable bits (currently only in Escape from Catland) were made using genial.ly - which is SO much fun to use. Plus I nabbed the S’CAPE templates for some extra functionality (and got to practice my French).

All the generic photos, clipart and backgrounds are not mine, but free-to-use images found through searches on Unsplash or DuckDuckGo (or occasionally Google, if that’s your thing). Professor Acorn and her cat Lola were bought from Shutterstock.

All the images that look like they were made in PowerPoint… were made in PowerPoint. And in fact all the planning for the game, and the flow chart to make sure everything fits together, is all in PowerPoint. Each game has its own file and Escape from Catland had to have two because it started getting really laggy after 150Mb. Ahem.

The awesome QBE and banana padlock logos were kindly designed and donated by Ranny at Ransom Designs. Thanks Ranny!

Who tho?