Project Skydrop: the treasure hunt encouraging exploration
It’s easy to feel like life will never have the wonder and adventure you felt like it could have in your youth. As one slides into adulthood, one finds that a brilliant, sunny day doesn’t make you overjoyed anymore. Instead, it makes you grumble about how the tube into work’s going to be hotter and less fragrant than Satan’s armpit. However, you’re not alone in feeling this way, and there are people out there dedicated to putting that spark of possibility back into your days.
After all, what else is the skyrocketing popularity of tabletop role-playing games but a more structured, more intellectually stimulating version of playing Lord of the Rings in the playground? It goes even further than that, though. All the way to the thriving treasure-hinting community springing up in many different corners of the internet.
While many of us were blown away by Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones at an early age, it left us with nothing more than a penchant for adventure stories and complicated feelings about whips. For video game designer Jason Rohrer and musician Tom Bailey, it left them feeling something rather more constructive: inspired.
Speaking to PRNewswire, Rohrer said, “Many of us spend quite a bit of time watching other people have adventures in movies. We wanted to turn those imaginary adventures into something that people could actually live. Project Skydrop brings all these elements together to make a real-world experience unlike anything that’s ever occurred before. We’re hoping to make the greatest treasure hunt of all time.”
While the project is barely six months old at the time of writing, with the first hunt going live in September 2024, Rohrer and Bailey already have a convincing argument that they have. The hunt begins, of course, with a treasure. $25,000 worth of 24-karat gold carved into an intricate sculpture. This was then placed somewhere on the northeast coast of the United States, and every day, over a 21-day period, a photo was taken of the area where the treasure was found. Day one is a satellite photo 500 miles in diameter all the way up to day 21, which is one foot in diameter.
There are also two webcams mounted at the location of the treasure. Yes, there is actually a treasure to be found, and this isn’t a hoax. These photos and webcam feeds were accessible by officially joining the project on the website, which led to the real heart of the project: the thriving, respectful community that formed and celebrated when the first treasure was found by meteorologist Dan Leonard.
Not only will this project reconnect you to the joy and adventure you felt as a child, but it’ll also restore some of the hope in humanity you had back then. This group was competing for a lot of money. When the treasure was found, however, there was no commiserating or bitterness, just eagerness for the next one to come around later this year. Happy hunting!
