Yeah. Sorry not sorry.
I don't blame anyone for feeling like it is a little overwhelming to have all these treasure hunts. If you're like me, you enjoy the clues and puzzles, and you wouldn't mind a cash prize either, so you spend too much time treasure hunting to the point where it is kind of problematic.
I got way into the 2021
Cline-Maxim treasures and I got a little bit into the Expedition Utah treasure hunt series (still going on). I have nothing but positive vibes for those fellow treasure-hunt-hosts, but honestly, it was really draining to spend so much time/energy searching for all those treasures, especially the Fall 2021 Cline-Maxim hunt with the leaderboard thing (something about that
leaderboard just drove me to spend excessive amounts of time and energy searching for the treasure, it was exhausting and seems daunting to do that again).
I made some very deliberate choices in the design of this treasure hunt series to try to mitigate the "whelm":
1. I kept the geographic area small (Even though I have some GREAT hiding places in mind elsewhere in the state) and I intended the hunts to be for "locals" (more or less).
2. I went for parallel instead of serial. If you want to go for all six Saturns, you can. If you are content to find one that looks fun and focus your energy there, that works too.
3. I opted to NOT have a leaderboard. In some ways it is way cool and makes it like a race, but that single thing, more than anything else, is what really overwhelmed me last year. If the
Utahtreasurehunts.com treasure hunts were compared to a "sprint" and a "marathon", then I want this treasure hunt to be like a casual stroll through a park... or birdwatching or something.
More thoughts on treasure hunt philosophy:
There have been enough treasure hunts that I've been involved in that I've developed some opinions about what makes a 'good treasure hunt'.
-At the top of the hirearchy is Forrest Fenn's treasure (although it was not Utah-based). It was a poem based hunt and it was very
cryptic/interpretive . It had a huge payoff: multiple millions of dollars. It was free for everyone, the poem was easily found through an internet search. Treasure hunts like that don't come around very often and I'm glad I could participate in the fun before the treasure was eventually found.
P.S. is anyone else ticked that the solution to his poem was never shared? I really want to know where the treasure had been (and how close I had been to finding it).
-The next best thing, in my opinion, is the
Onthejohn or Cline-Maxim treasure (see
their website here, they still have hunts going on). It has become a recurring thing and it is free, local, has a pretty big payout (thousands to tens of thousands of dollars), it is pretty fun with a variety of clues/puzzles, there was some fun local hype around it, etc. I can't say enough positive things about what those guys have done/are doing.
-Below that I would put the
Expedition Utah hunts (still going on). Again, free to participate with pretty high payouts (my memory says: 10ish hunts with prizes up to 10,000 dollars, right?) It has multiple ongoing hunts to keep it fresh and to focus on various parts of the state. It is really cool what Wesley has done/is doing.
-Below that was a pretty small treasure hunt series going on in Kaysville a few years ago. My friends that live there enlisted my help and we had a lot of fun trying to figure out the clues even though the
prizes were small. But in the end, I found the clues to be pretty 'meh', they just kind of lacked elegance/coherance; the kind of clues where when you hear the solution you say to yourself, "I never would have figured that out." But hey, this guy was also putting up his own money for prizes and not charging anyone a dime, so I'm not complaining. I still give him props for doing it and I think a lot of people really had some fun.
-Then there was that "treasurefinders" app (maybe it is still around, I don't know). I heard about it back when I was doing escape room stuff, they approached me about having Enigma Escape Experience become a "featured merchant" or something. Before giving them a response, I downloaded the app and started playing around with it. Basically, you follow clues that lead you to businesses and you can get discounts (and occasionally free stuff) from those businesses. I found the clues totally lack-luster and one-dimensional. I didn't want to be snobbish, but ultimately I turned them down because I just didn't want to associate my escape room business with such mediocre clues.
-At the bottom of the barrell is the "Gold Ticket/Candyman" treasure hunt. This was just lame (no offense to anyone who liked it). Basically, 1000 people from Utah each paid 50 bucks for a chance to win $5,000. It sounded fun so I forked out the $50. The poem-based clue was delivered through email one day and about an hour later the treasure was claimed. That was disappointing enough, but then when I heard the solution I had to shake my head; it was just not that good, no where near a $50 puzzle. It's one thing if your clues get figured out fast (I've been there, a lot of us in the escape room world (and now treasure hunt world
) have been there), but it is another thing entirely when those clues are just bad, ESPECIALLY if you are charging people 50 bucks! The Gold Ticket peeps had a cute story of "rich candy factory owner is generously giving away their factory to a lucky winner, just like Willy Wonka" but I feel like when it came down to it, they were just making money in a pretty lame way. There was nothing generous about their $5,000 Utah prize after charging $50,000 of Utahns' money to have a chance to find it.
So anyway...
I'm hoping my treasure hunts fall right between Expedtion Utah and the Kaysville guy: The payout is relatively small (each Saturn is made from around $600 of precious metals), but I hope the scale is appropriately small to match (local Wasatch mountains). I think my clues are above-average on elegance and originality, etc and therefore a lot of fun to solve; but everyone probably thinks that about their own clues, so we'll see what my searchers think when all the Saturns are found.
But hey, if people don't have fun solving the clues, well at least I had fun designing them, so that's something.