The search for the golden statuette: a unique project from the creator of computer games
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Imagine that you are making your way through a dense forest and find a treasure made of pure gold among the intertwined roots of trees in the fallen leaves...
You don’t like fairy tales? The time of treasures has long passed? It is incredible, but for the participants of the Skydrop project, the plot of ancient stories became a reality in 2024!
The grand treasure hunt game started on September 19. It was organized by the American programmer and creator of computer games Jason Rohrer.
The organizer of the project hid a statuette made of the highest grade gold in the forest. Its weight is 280 grams. And the cost is more than 26 thousand dollars!
With its intricate shape, the statuette resembles the Trofeo Senza Fine — the main trophy of the Giro d’Italia cycling race. By the way, this art object has previously served as a source of inspiration for a number of designers. We talked about one such example here.
Photo caption: Gold statuette, the main prize of the Skydrop project.
Jason Rohrer admitted that he was motivated to launch the Skydrop game by the Fenn Treasure project — a hunt for a chest of gold, organized by millionaire Forrest Fenn in the Rocky Mountains. You can read more about this unusual project in our article “The treasure trove that people searched for with the help of poems”.
Those wishing to participate in the Skydrop project had to pay an entry fee of $20. For this, they received access to daily clues and a group chat for participants, where the progress of the game was discussed. It is known that half of the collected funds went to form a cash prize for the winner. The amount of the reward increased with each day of the search and, in the end, exceeded 83 thousand dollars.
Every day, participants received an aerial photograph of the prize and a map, gradually narrowing the search area. The first photo of the golden statuette was taken from a distance of only 30 centimeters from the ground, and the initial search map covered an area with a radius of 800 kilometers.
The last day of the game was scheduled for October 10. On this day, the organizer of the project promised to send participants a map showing the location of the treasure with an accuracy of one square foot. That is, in fact, the map would accurately depict where it was.
However, the winner was determined earlier. It was Dan Leonard, a meteorologist from Boston. In one of his interviews, he said that he used photos of the treasure on the project website. Day after day, Leonard used photographs to find out what kind of cloudiness there was in the area where the golden statuette was hidden, and used this data to search. The man promised that he would donate part of his winnings to charity.
Photo caption: Jar with gold coins, the prize of the second round of the Skydrop project.
And after the gold statuette was found, the second round of the game unexpectedly started. This time the treasure was a glass jar with gold coins worth 87 thousand dollars, hidden in the forests of New England. To find it, it was necessary to solve a puzzle that was sent to each participant of the project who paid a twenty-dollar contribution. To the disappointment of many, the winner wished to remain anonymous.
Photo caption: The jar with a message that the winner of the project left at the site of the treasure.
Jason Rohrer himself says that his main desire was to distract players from the virtual world and switch their attention to living nature. To remind people how important it is to look around and start being interested in reality. The organizer of the Skydrop project admitted that he himself loves to go hiking with his three sons.
