The ‘Quest for the Tees Tusk’ was one of Frolicked’s latest puppet-filled, puzzle-fuelled adventures for the whole family. Audiences encountered a cast of colourful characters whilst using their powers of deduction to uncover a series of hidden clues, whilst exploring locations across Stockton town centre. Our players ultimate goal was to seek out the last known location of the Tees Tusk…

The game was devised and fully illustrated by me, Beka H, and our prize was an original illustration that celebrated the town and the themes of the game:

The Tees Tusk is an actual Stockton-on-Tees legend – a real life story about the discovery and excavation of a hippo’s tooth, found in the region more than 100 years ago. It is the northern-most recorded discovery of hippo remains in the world, but sadly, the tooth made it’s way to it’s final known location… and was then lost. The story provided the perfect narrative for another of Frolicked’s successful game-based mysteries, where audience members met both an inquisitive pair of birds and our ever intrepid octogenarian explorer, Gran, whilst searching for and decoding a set of clues hidden across the town.

Here are some of the illustrations and clues created for the game:

Here is the map and the cipher I created (see below). The runic cipher was created by me and based on the actual runic alphabet:

Finally, here are some of the clues in situ!