It's a bit of a tradition in our house that on minor holidays, like St. Patrick's Day, I make a scavenger hunt for my older kiddo. This practice grew out of the traditional Easter egg hunt and really got going in October 2020 when the then-4 year old couldn't go Trick or Treating. I made a somewhat elaborate scavenger hunt for him and his friends to do outside:
I littered the yard with white plastic "ghost" eggs that the kids collected
I made a giant pot of worms (angel hair noodles and olive oil) that hid magical Light Keys (glow sticks)
Use the letters hidden in the ghost eggs to spell out the alphabet and "unlock" a Magical Lantern (a black light flashlight)
Find the foam pumpkins hidden in the yard and answer the riddles / questions on the back (written, of course, in invisible ink).
The Halloween Hunt has only grown more complex as the kids have grown up and last year even involved putting a skeleton back together...
The kiddo started asking for more scavenger hunts and at one point even said, "Mommy, you haven't done a scavenger hunt in FOREVER" when I had, in fact, done one the week prior. And that's how we got here, on the Eve of St. Patrick's, planning another hunt.
I thought about doing a St. Patrick's theme, however destiny and serendipity had a baby and here we are. Last year, The Hubs and Kiddo started playing Tunic, an indie adventure puzzle game. They now have matching Tunic shirts and when it was announced that there'd be a Tunic plush, I was instantly on the waiting list. Fast forward a few months and the plushies have arrived - but they don't know that.
So what better treasure to find in a scavenger hunt than a pair of cute Tunic plushies? And thus the theme for the hunt. It's still a work in progress, but this is a dev blog and all about The Process.
Overview: A Vault containing unknown treasure is sealed in The Tomb. Three gems are required to unlock the vault, however the gems are themselves sealed away in their own chests, naturally. The hunters will start with a journal containing sketches, an unknown language, and a map and will use that to find their way to each gem and the puzzles needed to be solved to unlock them.
The Purple Path: The Purple Gem is locked away behind a 3 digit code.
Starts with clues in the notebook: 1) a sketch of circles in a diamond shape with three of the circles filled in, 2) two Ancient letters (Cyrillic) paired with numbers A = 1 Я = 32, 3) name of the map area where it's found, and 4) a sketch of a fox with arrows and ?? pointing at it
In the room, there's a DIY punch wall with an Ancient letter paired with a number in each spot
Using the circle + diamond sketch from the notebook, players will retrieve letters from the corresponding spots
These letters need to then be matched against their position in the Ancient alphabet
The Ancient alphabet key (aka the Cyrillic alphabet) will be printed and hidden behind the painting of a fox, referred to by the notebook
Putting it all together, the Ancient letter is matched to its location in he alphabet, thus giving players the order in which to enter the associated numbers
At least, that's the flow as it stands now... always subject to change. And if you're thinking this is too much for a 6 year old, you're right! I plan to lure The Hubs into the game under the guise of "helping" the kiddo, and that way he'll work to uncover his plushie too!
There's also a green path and orange path in progress and I will share the final result in a future update!