Oxogo and you could win $5,000
In the past several months, as the games industry has debated the role of NFTs and cryptocurrency, there’s been a lot of talk about playing games to earn money. But on Itch.io, a new RPG is promising not money for earning in-game assets but a grand cash prize for whoever unlocks its secrets. And the developers say the pool will only grow as more people play.
At a glance, with its funky old-school sprite art and retro design conventions, Oxogo (pronounced roughly /o/-sho-go) is familiar indie game territory. In the game, the player explores a dungeon and solves puzzles, trying to find their kidnapped dog.
The twist, however, is in the treasure hunt—an old-fashioned “armchair treasure hunt”, the kind that crosses the line from the medium of fantasy into real life. Once the realm of scavenger party games and later crossing into literature, these hunts are intoxicating in their mystery. Some early examples, like the book Masquerade, are fascinating studies of pre-Internet sleuthing and crowdsourcing.
Oxogo's developers, two amateurs from Galicia, Spain, are intentionally anonymous—preferring to stick with the pseudonyms "G" and "D" to “avoid pressure to reveal the game’s secrets,” G explains. For G and D, treasure hunts aren’t just a cherished childhood memory but also a source of inspiration. The goal was to pay homage to the tradition by creating a version for video games.
In the late 90s, there was a book called The Merlin Mystery, an enigmatic collection of arcane drawings and prose whose illustrations, once deciphered, would award the winning reader with a prize of $30,000. Those within the treasure hunt community across the Internet remember it well—especially G, who received the book as a gift from his father as a
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