JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Right now, you could be one answer away from more than a million dollars.
A new nationwide treasure hunt game launched on July 1, and game organizers say that your ticket to $1.2 million is hidden somewhere in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina or South Carolina. Anyone who plays is potentially one correct answer away from winning.
"We're leaving Las Cruces, New Mexico to go on to our destination," said a family in an uploaded video on TreasureGames.fun.
Thousand of people, just like that family, are flooding the Southeast in search of their fortune through the new game Wish Lamps, which is part of Treasure Game$.
"This is what you're looking for, this heavy bronze real lamp," said Treasure Games founder Dirk Gibson, "if you find this, this particular one in your region is worth $1.2 million."
Gibson founded Treasure Game$, an online platform that can be played through an app on your phone or other devices. The game Wish Lamps gives daily clues about the location of a genie lamp hidden somewhere in Florida, Georgia or the Carolinas that could pay $1.2 million to the person who finds it.
"There's already thousands of people in your area looking and the reason we know that is because they have to film their adventures and upload it to our platform to play the game and win," said Gibson.
Before you start looking under every rock and behind random bushes, you should know that while you can play for free, in order to win the grand prize, you have to subscribe and pay an $8.99 monthly fee. Subscribers must also upload videos of their progress as they hunt for the treasure.
After you sign up, the first clue is a long poem about a pirate's treasure. If you know the answer based on the poem you can win instantly, but nobody's won it yet.
"Once they get enough between the poem, the daily clues and the hints and advantage clues, these people get in their cars and they go on a trip," said Gibson.
Gibson and 4 of his friends founded Treasure Game$ and already awarded $1.2 million for the first lamp that was found and just last month another $200,000 to a second winner in a different region. The United States is split up into 10 regions and different regions will have different prizes based on the lamp hidden somewhere in their region.
The lamps are inside of a lockbox with security cameras constantly recording the location and Gibson said sometimes people have walked right past the lamp. Users who play the game will receive a code to open the lockbox when they enter the proper information in the app.
Gibson and his partners are also financially backing the game.
"The mission behind it is to spread wealth better than the lottery," said Gibson, "in ours, there's no chance, it's 100% effort, 100% skill."