Veil Hunts are coming your way! These are exciting new treasure hunts with clues leading to a location of a Veil Proxy (shown above). If you touch it first – you can claim the cash bounty.
The hunts are of short durations – no more than 22 days. So, the hunts are not prolonged adventures – but fast and furious experiences! The first Veil Proxy is hidden somewhere within the circle below. This circle will shrink daily, narrowing down potential locations. As it contracts and new clues emerge, you’ll edge closer to uncovering the mystery location. A real-life hidden treasure awaits! Let’s learn more from the creators, Jeff and Paul Duvilla!
Six Questions with Jeff and Paul:
- 1Q) This is exciting! A new treasure hunting site with a hunt to be released soon – and plans of others upcoming! Please share more about this first hunt and how searchers can get involved.
Thanks Jenny! We think so too. Our first hunt, VEIL ONE, goes live Thursday March 27th. All are welcome to sign up for free to watch the live trail cam and see the search area that shrinks every day over the course of 22 days. Players can also pay $20 to sign up to receive a daily clue. We assign a cash based value to each treasure at the start of the hunt. For VEIL ONE we started with $2,500. Additionally $10 from every signup goes toward the reward for the finder.
- 2Q) The treasure hunting community is currently booming. When did you first get involved and what inspired you to make your own hunts?
Like so many others, the first hunt we participated in was the hunt for Forrest Fenn’s treasure. We discussed the hunt nonstop for a few days before our interest waned due to our distance from the search area. Years later, when we heard about Project Skydrop we were drawn to it instantly. They combined aspects of other hunts and games in a way that we really enjoyed—especially the shrinking circle and bounty.
As far as inspiration, when their hunt ended, we wanted to keep playing and were hopeful that they would improve some things and go again. We had so much fun together participating—it didn’t matter that we didn’t find the treasure. We were borderline fanatical about it and just wanted to keep hanging out, interacting with the treasure hunting community and planning adventures. When their hunts ended, we thought “we can sit around and wait for a new hunt that excites us, or we can go and create our own”.
- 3Q) Searchers come and go in the community. Sometimes searchers leave because they don’t believe they can solve the clues to find the treasures – so they feel why spend time on it. What assurance can you give those interested in the Veil Hunts – that these are solvable? What advice would you give a newcomer to the hobby?
We love this question! This is so important—the joy of searching for treasure shouldn’t be limited to those who are good at riddles, or those who are good at maps. Our goal is to make real adventure feel accessible to everyone, and to do that we have about 30 different clue types that we’ve tested and each hunt will feature several different clue types on parallel paths. Our clue types include riddles, maps, images, history, cyphers, and so many more. With each of our hunts, we really get to know an area, its history, its surroundings, and we tailor our clues to best fit the location. We’re debuting a clue type that we haven’t seen before for VEIL ONE, called a Glitch. Also, since we use a shrinking search area, we guarantee that the treasure will be found within a set duration (22 days for VEIL ONE).
If you’re a newcomer to the hobby, we would like to say Welcome! The treasure hunting community is amazing and growing so quickly. There are nice people everywhere, and most of us are here for more than just treasure—we’re here for fun, friendships and adventure.
- 4Q) I see some features in the first Veil Hunt that Project Skydrop had – which was a blast – and I’m glad to see! One of the best elements of Project Skydrop were the on-site cameras – which you are keeping! Yes! But these proved problematic for PS’s goals for the hunt. How do your goals, or maybe usage of the cameras, differ?
We’ve learned a lot from past hunts, including Skydrop, and the really smart community that play these games. We were concerned about trail cam image security as it relates to geolocation and feel confident that we’ve addressed concerns. The trail cam is an important part of our operation as it establishes the moment of discovery and helps to substantiate a first-finder claim.
Our trail cam will not show temperature data, and at the moment our images cycle every 30 minutes (or sooner if motion is detected). One thing we’re really curious to hear player feedback on is the proximity of the camera to the treasure. We debated close up, which reveals more detail, vs farther away, which reveals more context. Perhaps we’ll flip it in the next one.
- 5Q) Other than a shrinking circle and on-site cameras, you plan to give out other clues to the location of the treasure. What type of clues will these be? Will anyone be able to solve them or are they only solvable by a genius?
We are not geniuses, so they will definitely be solvable by laypeople! We have 6(ish) different categories for our clues–photos at/near the treasure site, maps, written context, visual context, word solves and cyphers, and a miscellaneous bucket of things that don’t fit into any of those categories. Each hunt features 3 different clue types—so one hunt may feature a riddle, a map-based clue, and an image. Another might feature a word solve, visual context, and something from the miscellaneous bucket.
Our clues are structured to progressively build upon each other. Rather than having one “I solved the puzzle” moment, we send one clue type every 3 days starting on day 1. Then clue type 2 the next day and clue type 3 the day after. So if you receive a map-based clue on day 1, you’ll get the second map-based clue on day 4. This allows people who, for example, are good at riddles to play along and receive a riddle of equivalent benefit on days 2, 5, 8 and so on.
When we say clues allow for progression, what we mean is a clue on day 5 may narrow you down to 20 potential areas. A clue on day 8 may narrow it down to 10. A clue on day 11 may narrow it down to 5. So players should get the feeling that they are closing in on the correct location as the game progresses.
- 6Q) Please share a bit of background about the upstart of Veil and what you envision for the future.
Launching Veil has been the perfect blend of our skill sets. We both cover different ends of the creative spectrum. Jeff has a background in Creative Design and Themed Entertainment while Paul specializes in Video, Photo and Web. It isn’t often that we find so much overlap in an idea that we share which is why Veil is so unique.
We have ambitious goals for the future of Veil. We see Veil not being limited to just traditional treasure hunts, but also new experiences that connect with new audiences. One example of this is our plan to launch a new line of themed hunts. Rather than hunting for a traditional treasure, Theme Hunts will revolve around hunting for a themed prop and all clues will help to craft that story. To tease our first themed hunt a bit, imagine a cool, glowing energy canister has fallen from a top secret government plane and landed somewhere in the forest. You’re tasked with retrieving it home before it falls into the wrong hands. Each clue will offer a light dive into the story—where the plane took off from, where its destination was, when a storm blew it off course, intercepted readings from enemy spies who are hot on the trail, and so on.
Our long term goal is to host multiple hunts at a time all over the country. So when one hunt ends in your area, you’ll know a new hunt will be starting soon. We see so much potential in treasure hunting and in our community. If everyone who plays has half as much fun as we do, we’ll be offering hunts for a long time to come.
