New Chesterfield Games Quarter will bring virtual reality challenges and high-end computer gaming to town

Nick Hogan, owner of Chesterfield Escape Rooms, is excited about the new games quarter which will open on November 23.

Two new enterprises – Chesterfield Virtual Reality and Game Zone – will join the established Chesterfield Escape Rooms and Geeks Headquarters on Soresby Street.

The newcomers will move into premises formerly occupied by The Lilypad cafe and Amblers estate agency.

Chesterfield Games Quarter will open on November 23, 2021, providing everything for gamers in one location.

Nick Hogan, owner of Chesterfield Escape Rooms, said: “These things are popping up all over the country - someone will open a pc gaming arena, someone will open an escape room and then something else, all in different places. If I was a consumer I'd want to go to one place.

"I thought it's a super opportunity to put complementary businesses together in one location. I’ve lived in Chesterfield for more than 20 years and wanted to give something back to the town.”

Chesterfield Virtual Reality will be a place for multi-player games for four people. Nick, 52, said: “There will be racing cages as though you're in a Formula 1 car and you can have a race against your friends on an F1 circuit. You can do virtual escape rooms together and there's hundreds of other games you can play.”

Game Zone will be a mixture of high-end, top spec PC gaming, retro games such as Space Invaders and Super Mario with a little bit of XBox and PlayStation. This enterprise will be managed by Rory Gdula, one of six employees that Nick took on at Chesterfield Escape Rooms under the government’s KickStarter programme.

Nick, who took early retirement from running a division of a large software company in London, has been delighted with the success of Chesterfield Escape Rooms, which he opened in May this year. He said: “We’ve had over 3,000 players and bookings are strong as we head towards Christmas. There are over 2,000 escape rooms in the UK and on TripAdvisor we were number 27 last week – we are very, very pleased. As a fledgling business we’re doing something right.”

Geeks Headquarters specialises in board games, trading cards and role play games and was opened by a former Chesterfield market trader several years ago.