寻宝活动开始了：这座价值 26,000 美元的雕像隐藏在东北部的树林中
【中美创新时报2024 年 9 月 25 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）“天降计划”将带领搜索者找到雕像，并可能带来更多现金。这款游戏将引导搜索者找到位于美国东北部某处公共土地森林地表上的一座金像。与许多著名的现代寻宝游戏不同，这款游戏保证能很快找到，最迟在 10 月 10 日。对此，《波士顿环球报》记者比利·贝克（Billy Baker）作了下述报道。
二十多年来，杰森·罗勒（Jason Rohrer）一直在为小众观众制作小众电子游戏，这些哲学冥想游戏的名字像“一小时，一生”，受到评论家的喜爱，但他承认，“我的朋友和家人从未玩过它们，因为它们太深奥了。”
因此，这位被称为“世界上最有趣的电子游戏设计师”的人开始创造一款更多人能欣赏的游戏：一场现实生活中的寻宝游戏。
周四，这位新罕布什尔州的设计师公布了“天降计划”，这款游戏将引导搜索者找到位于美国东北部某处公共土地森林地表上的一座金像。与许多著名的现代寻宝游戏不同，这款游戏保证能很快找到，最迟在 10 月 10 日。
它的运作方式是，罗勒每天都会在天降计划网站上发布一张潜在位置区域的地图。第一天，那张地图是一个半径 500 英里的圆圈，覆盖了东北部的大部分地区。每天，地图圆圈都会缩小，直到第 21 天它只有一平方英尺，基本上指向雕像。
截至周一，潜在搜索区域已大大缩小至半径 194 英里，但仍包括马萨诸塞州中部和西部、康涅狄格州大部分地区以及佛蒙特州南部和新罕布什尔州南部的一小部分。
对于那些支付了 20 美元入场费的人来说，在 10 月 10 日之前有办法解决这个谜题。每天，注册玩家都会收到一封电子邮件，其中包含森林地面上雕像的航拍照片。第一天，这张照片距离地面仅一英尺，但每天它都会越来越高，最终揭示出可以为其位置提供线索的地理特征。
还有一个森林地面上雕像的现场视频，Reddit 论坛上已经开始挖掘这个视频以寻找线索。图像记录了现场的当前温度，搜索者一直在痴迷地追踪日落和下雨的时间。
这座雕像由 Rohrer 亲自铸造，由 10 盎司纯 24 克拉黄金制成，目前价值 26,000 美元。此外，雕像还带有一个代码，发现者可以兑换现金赏金，赏金将是总入场费的一半。截至周一下午，这一数字已超过 14,000 美元，但随着更多潜在搜索者加入游戏，这一数字还在迅速增长。
“这一切都发生在森林里，是实时的，而且很容易获得。你不需要成为一名游戏玩家。这是关于宝藏、徒步旅行和户外活动的，这些对父母、孩子和祖父母来说都很有趣，”他说。“即使你不能去那里，你也可以坐在扶手椅上参与，看看谷歌地图，一起玩，试着缩小范围。”
罗勒说，Project Skydrop 是他“改进寻宝游戏类型”的尝试，因为著名的现代寻宝游戏实在太难了。
“Masquerade” 是 20 世纪 70 年代的寻宝游戏，涉及解析英国儿童读物中的线索以找到一只埋藏的金兔，成为一种全球现象，销量超过一百万份，人们在各地挖掘花园。
另一部以书籍为基础的寻宝游戏《秘密》于 1982 年在美国问世，书中收录了 12 首神秘的诗句和 12 幅神秘的画作，引导寻宝者找到埋藏在北美不同城市的 12 个不同的宝箱。每个宝箱里都有一把钥匙，可以换取价值约 1,000 美元的珠宝。
到目前为止，只找到了三个宝箱。最近的一个宝箱于 2019 年在波士顿被发现，埋在北端朗格尼公园垒球场的本垒板下，许多寻宝者仍在痴迷于剩下的九个宝箱。创作者拜伦·普莱斯于 2005 年在一场车祸中丧生。
最著名的现代寻宝游戏是寻找一个装有数百万黄金和珠宝的宝箱，它被新墨西哥州的一位名叫福雷斯特·芬恩的艺术品经销商藏在落基山脉。这个地点隐藏在一首充满线索的诗中，五个人为了寻找它而丧命，直到 2020 年，一名医学生才找到它，此时距离它被隐藏已有十年。尽管如此，芬恩游戏仍卷入争议和诉讼之中，因为这个地点从未被透露过。据报道，芬恩在找到它后不久就去世了。
罗勒将“天降计划”视为现代系列中的第四大寻宝游戏，但他表示，他的目标是“通过创造一种不会因太难或太容易而失败的寻宝游戏来打造更好的捕鼠器。”
他已经为 Project Skydrop 工作了三年，与音乐家 Tom Bailey 合作，后者帮助创建了游戏和设计雕像，并为公告视频创作了音乐。
“挑战始终在于试图弄清楚如何创造一个任何人都可以玩的谜题，这个谜题会逐渐变得更容易，但一开始无法解决，最后却 100% 可以解决，”Rohrer 说。“我们问自己的问题是：你如何制作世界上最伟大的寻宝游戏？”
这是一个雄心勃勃的目标，但这正是 Rohrer 在游戏界建立声誉的基础。
2007 年，他凭借“Passage”在游戏界声名鹊起，这款游戏只有五分钟，但给玩家带来了“一生的障碍”。它后来成为现代艺术博物馆的永久收藏品。
另一款游戏“Inside a Star Filled Sky”无法在无限的时间内完成。然后是“A Game for Someone”，它将在另一个生命中完成；游戏设定是在未来 2000 年内进行，埋藏在内华达州的沙漠中。
“天降计划”能否成功成为世界上最伟大的寻宝活动？随着罗勒的名字被提及，网上的讨论越来越激烈，而且随着线索变得越来越有说服力，讨论只会越来越激烈：周一的航拍照片显示，宝箱里只有树叶、一些植被和两棵倒下的树。
“这似乎是对现代寻宝体验的一个很好的改编，有一个有趣的钩子，”发现了埋在波士顿的“秘密”宝箱的杰森·克鲁帕特说。“这是一个丰富的题材，多年来一直未被充分利用，它让人们走进现实世界，亲眼看看周围，试图把所有东西拼凑起来，当你觉得自己发现了什么的时候，你会感到肾上腺素激增。”
事实上，罗勒与家人住在新罕布什尔州多佛，喜欢和三个儿子（年龄在 13 至 21 岁之间）一起徒步旅行。他说，他很高兴这款游戏能让人们离开屏幕，走进森林，步履轻快。他相信现在还有足够的时间进入游戏，因为他认为要到寻宝活动的第三周才能破解谜题。
在此之前，谜题就在那里。现在。在露天。等待被发现。很快。
题图：新罕布什尔州一位电子游戏设计师将价值 25,000 美元的黄金雕像藏在树林中。Jason Rohrer
附原英文报道：
Treasure hunt is on: This $26,000 statue is hidden in the woods of the Northeast
Project Skydrop will lead searchers to the statue, and potentially more cash
By Billy Baker Globe Staff,Updated September 25, 2024
A $25,000 gold statue hidden in the woods by a N.H. video game designer.Jason Rohrer
For more than two decades, Jason Rohrer has been making niche video games for niche audiences, philosophical meditations with names like “One Hour, One Life” that were adored by critics but, he admits, “my friends and family never played them because they were too esoteric.”
So the man who has been called “the world’s most interesting video game designer” set out to create a game more people can appreciate: a real-life treasure hunt.
On Thursday, the New Hampshire designer unveiled “Project Skydrop,” a game that will lead searchers to a gold statue sitting on the forest floor of public land somewhere in the northeastern United States. And unlike many famous modern treasure hunt games, this one is guaranteed to be found fast, by Oct. 10 at the latest.
The way it works is each day on the Project Skydrop website, Rohrer will publish a map of the potential location area. On day one, that map was a 500-mile radius circle covering much of the Northeast. Each day, the map circle shrinks, until on day 21 it will be just one square foot, essentially pointing at the statue.
As of Monday, the potential search area had narrowed considerably to a 194-mile radius, but it still includes Central and Western Massachusetts, most of Connecticut, as well as southern Vermont and a tiny chunk of southern New Hampshire.
For those who pay the $20 entry fee, there is a way to solve the puzzle before Oct. 10. Each day, registered players will receive an email featuring an aerial photo of the statue on the forest floor. On day one, the photo was taken just a foot off the ground, but each day it will go higher and higher, eventually revealing geographic features that will hold clues to its location.
There’s also a live video of the statue on the forest floor that is already being mined for clues on Reddit forums. The image records the current temperature at the spot, and searchers have been obsessively tracking when the sun sets, and when it rains.
The statue, which Rohrer cast himself, is made of 10 ounces of pure 24-karat gold, currently valued at $26,000. In addition, the statue features a code that the finder can redeem for a cash bounty that will be half of the total entry fees. As of Monday afternoon, that number was more than $14,000, but growing rapidly as more would-be searchers enter the game.
“This is out there, in the forest, in real time, and it’s accessible. You don’t need to be a gamer. This is about treasure and hiking and the outdoors, stuff that is interesting to parents and kids and grandparents,” he said. “And even if you can’t get out there, you can participate in your armchair, looking at Google maps, playing along, trying to narrow it down.”
Rohrer said Project Skydrop is his attempt to “improve the treasure hunt as a game genre,” because the famous modern ones were simply too difficult.
“Masquerade,” a 1970s hunt which involved parsing clues in a British children’s book to find a buried golden hare, became a global phenomenon that sold more than a million copies and had people digging up gardens everywhere.
“The Secret,” another book-based hunt, came out in the United States in 1982 and featured 12 cryptic verses, as well as 12 cryptic paintings, that would lead searchers to 12 different chests buried in different cities in North America. Each chest contains a key that can be exchanged for a jewel valued at about $1,000.
To date, only three of the chests have been found. The most recent one was found in Boston in 2019, buried under home plate of a softball field at Langone Park in the North End, and many searchers continue to obsess over the remaining nine. Byron Preiss, the creator, died in a car accident in 2005.
The most famous modern treasure hunt was for a chest that contained millions in gold and jewels that was hidden in the Rockies by a New Mexico art dealer named Forrest Fenn. The location was tucked in a clue-filled poem, and five people died searching for it before a medical student found it in 2020, a decade after it was hidden. Still, the Fenn game is embroiled in controversy and lawsuits, because the location has never been revealed. Fenn died a short time after it was reportedly found.
Rohrer views Project Skydrop as the fourth great treasure hunt in the modern lineage, but said his goal was “to build a better mouse trap by creating a treasure hunt that doesn’t break from being too hard or too easy.”
He has worked on Project Skydrop for three years, collaborating with musician Tom Bailey, who helped create the game and design the statue, and created the music for the announcement video.
“The challenge was always trying to figure how you create a puzzle that anyone can play, that gets progressively easier, but that isn’t solvable in the beginning and is 100 percent solvable at the end,” Rohrer said. “The question we asked ourselves was: How do you make the world’s greatest treasure hunt?”
It’s an ambitious goal, but that’s what Rohrer’s reputation in gaming has been built upon.
In 2007, he rose to fame in the gaming world with “Passage,” a game that lasts only five minutes but hits players with “a lifetime of obstacles.” It has since become part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Another game, “Inside a Star Filled Sky,” cannot be completed in an infinite amount of time. And then there is “A Game for Someone,” which will be completed in another lifetime; it is meant to be played 2,000 years in the future, and is buried in the Nevada desert.
Will “Project Skydrop” succeed in becoming the world’s greatest treasure hunt? With Rohrer’s name attached, the buzz is building online and should only grow as the clues become more informative: Monday’s aerial photo showed little more than leaves, some vegetation, and two fallen trees.
“It seems like a nice twist on the modern treasure hunting experience, with an interesting hook,” said Jason Krupat, who found the “Secret” chest that was buried in Boston. “It’s a rich genre, one that’s been underexploited through the years, and it gets people out into the real world, physically looking around, trying to piece it together, getting these little adrenaline hits when you feel like you’re on to something.”
Indeed, Rohrer — who lives in Dover, N.H., with his family and enjoys hiking with his three boys, ages 13 to 21 — said he is thrilled that the game will get people off screens and out into the woods with a tingle in their step. And he believes there’s still plenty of time to enter, as he doesn’t think it will be solvable until the third week of the hunt.
Until then it’s just sitting there. Right now. Out in the open. Waiting to be found. Soon.
