A Game Designer Just Hid a Gold Trophy in the Woods for a Real-Life Treasure Hunt. It Starts Now

The muddy trail levels retired and we halt to drawback our breath. Which is good, due to the fact that hiking with my eyes covered has been a symptom successful the ass. A dependable says: “You tin instrumentality your blindfold disconnected now.” I squint arsenic I get my bearings. Then, aft a spot much hiking and immoderate bushwhacking, I yet spot it. The prize. The happening nary 1 is expected to cognize the determination of, astatine slightest for different fewer weeks. A aureate treasure.

I person to combat a lizard-brain instinct to scope for it. No. If each goes to plan, the treasure volition soon beryllium to idiosyncratic else—to the victor of a chaotic treasure hunt dreamed up by 2 of the guys starring maine done this distant wilderness. One is simply a instrumentalist named Tom Bailey. The different is Jason Rohrer, the mastermind. Rohrer has designed immoderate of the brainiest, highest-concept video games of the 21st century. Now there’s this: not a video game, but Rohrer’s archetypal crippled acceptable successful the existent world.

Rohrer calls it Project Skydrop, and he’s been moving connected it, mostly successful secret, since 2021. He is 46 years aged and tall. Like NBA-power-forward tall. And skinny. His blond hair, which erstwhile hung down his back, is present chopped short. Today, he’s successful boots, cargo pants, achromatic aviator glasses, and a bucket hat. (Think: Vietnam War chic, prevention for an highly Gen X wallet chain.) His 21-year-old lad is besides here, likewise tall, hairsbreadth youthfully flowing. He’d drawn the abbreviated straw and had to beryllium my idiosyncratic guide. As the hours resistance on, helium reminds the radical that we’re losing prima and should really permission the hiding spot earlier dark.

The treasure was paid for and made by Rohrer himself, formed from 10 troy ounces of 24k gold. It’s worthy astir $25,000, but added to that bounty is simply a yet-to-be-determined, perchance life-changing magnitude of bitcoin, depending connected however galore radical enactment successful the hunt. What I’m allowed to archer you astir the treasure’s determination is that it’s determination successful the northeastern United States and that I got present by archetypal flying to Rohrer’s location successful Dover, New Hampshire. Maybe I should add, astatine the hazard of saying excessively much, that I was past driven (again, blindfolded) rather a ways away, perchance crossed authorities lines, to nationalist onshore who knows where. A just-released YouTube trailer for Project Skydrop offers much specifics. “Perhaps there’s a feeling heavy down wrong of you,” goes the Gandalfian narration. “A hunger. For mystery. For adventure. And astir importantly, for treasure.” Then the video explains that to find the treasure, there’s a peculiar map, updated each greeting for (at most) 21 days, and photos taken via drone, changeable from progressively higher and higher points supra the treasure.

We walk respective hours astatine the driblet site. The guys equine six motion-sensor cameras astir the clearing, which they anticipation volition supply epic footage of the find. They besides alert their drone consecutive up and commencement snapping pics. The temper is giddy, adjacent arsenic the prima begins to acceptable and mosquitoes descend. Tasks done, we yet battalion up, and Rohrer’s kid readies my blindfold for the travel back. At the past moment, Rohrer calls Bailey implicit and points astatine their treasure, hardly disposable done a messiness of babe trees. “We’re ne'er gonna spot it again, Tom,” Rohrer says.

Two days from this moment, the contention to find it starts. And if you are speechmaking this connected September 19, 2024, that time is today. The hunt has conscionable begun.