The Joy of I Spy Treasure Hunt

10/2/2021:

Well, today is the 20th anniversary of the release of I Spy Treasure Hunt, the game. It was a cute, tiny little game, a game I played as a young child and enjoyed quite a lot. What I did not expect, at the time, was for this cute little game to continue to inspire me, the images staying in my mind for years, and to more or less change the course of my life. I’m fond of I Spy as a whole, but Treasure Hunt is uniquely special to me. I think I Spy Treasure Hunt, the game, is one of the greatest pieces of the entire body of work.

The Book?

Of course, no discussion of Treasure Hunt would be complete without bringing up the book! I Spy Treasure Hunt, the book (hereafter referred to as The Book) was released two years earlier in 1999 and marked a turning point in Walter Wick’s work with Scholastic in multiple ways.

For one, it was the final original I Spy book, meaning it was the final time that Jean Marzollo, the author of I Spy, and Walter Wick, would collaborate on a search-and-find book. After this, the two would go their separate ways, with Wick moving on to create Can You See What I See with the photography team that worked on Treasure Hunt, while Marzollo would continue to work on I Spy with the challenger series, writing new riddles for existing photos.

Additionally, The Book also has a very different structure to other I Spy books. Instead of being a collection of thematically related photos, it focuses on creating a distinct sense of place. The Book shows the town of Smuggler’s Cove, modeled for real with a gigantic sixteen-by-sixteen foot HO scale train set. Multiple photos capture images of the town from different angles, each one showing multiple common objects integrated into the train set, for the sake of I Spy gameplay. Other photos exist as their own sets, to zoom in and provide more detail to different steps of the treasure hunt.

In terms of I Spy books, Treasure Hunt is one of my favorites. In particular, The View From The Fort is my all-time favorite photo from I Spy. The craftsmanship of the HO-scale village is absolutely incredible, and almost feels like a real town, while the hidden object gameplay is still there and as fun as ever. The incredible detail of the model town makes the photo even more fascinating, even easier to get lost in.

All of this contributes to a very unique experience, quite different from other I Spy books. Treasure Hunt captures a journey through a town, following clues and uncovering secrets, to eventually uncover treasure in the well on the island.

The Game: Expanding on The Foundation

Treasure Hunt, the game, uses the book as a jumping off point to create something quite unique. Instead of creating a totally different town, the game is still set in Smuggler’s Cove. The town looks a little bit different in the game, as they added more buildings to explore, but the overall shape of the village is the same.

The biggest addition to the game is interactivity, of course. Looking around the familiar town from the book from a new perspective is a very cool experience. Many of the different locations were seen distantly in the book, but being able to walk up to them and explore them adds a new depth and richness to the town that was previously just seen in a few photos in a book.

Very few of the actual riddle screens in the game overlap with those seen in the book, which helps to add to this depth. Instead of viewing the lighthouse from a distance, you get to explore within the same lighthouse, completing a riddle on both an old painting and within the lighthouse keeper’s quarters. Instead of just seeing the top of the fort, you get to explore in and around the fort, visiting a picnic and exploring the old jail before going to the top for the familiar view.

New places in town get focus as well. The street down to the harbor has a collection of totally new scenes, such as an ice cream shop and a boat builder, two hallmarks of small New England coastal towns. Additionally, the island where the book previously ended becomes an entire new hub with a set of three scenes, in an abandoned foundation, a lush woods (evoking the image of the tree house from the book, a scene not otherwise seen in the game), and of course... the well.

As a child, when I first found the island in the game, I naturally was drawn immediately to the well, as that was where the book ended and where I thought the game would have the treasure. I was quite surprised to find a normal riddle there, showing an already-looted well full of objects from the forest. Now, this is simply delightful! It’s wonderful to see a familiar place in a new way. The game takes your expectations from the book and plays with them, using its many new photos and twists on ones from the book to further expand on the town itself, making Smuggler’s Cove feel even more fully realized as a place.

The Well of Memory

Naturally, as a game I played at a very young age, Treasure Hunt is a very nostalgic game. One additional layer of nostalgia for me is how real Smuggler’s Cove feels. I grew up in a similar place, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, so a lot of the scenery felt very familiar to me. An old shed with children playing pirates, an antique lighthouse just out of town, an ice cream shop by the harbor, the seemingly ancient foundation of a house, standing alone in the woods... all the familiar trappings of a childhood by the sea.

As such, the imagery of this game has had a grip on my heart for a very long time. I’ve been inspired by this, I’ve felt a need to create something that conveys my fondness for this kind of nautical imagery for a long time. In the RPGs I ran as a teenager, I kept trying to introduce coastal setting elements, even running games set on Cape Cod, though they were always short lived. Even as far back as fourth grade, I hijacked an imaginary game played by my friends and I and secretly transplanted it to Smuggler’s Cove. I’ve been enamored with this sort of imagery for a very, very long time, and Treasure Hunt feels like one of the very first times I felt my love for this.

For such a long time, I was unable to express this feeling. I had a burning need to create something, express something that conveyed my love for coastal imagery, but I didn’t know how for a long time. It was only recently, at the very start of the pandemic, when I felt an urge to revisit Treasure Hunt again. I hadn’t played the game since I was in fourth grade, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I played it and was just overjoyed to see all the familiar sights of Smuggler’s Cove. Instead of showing the world as I knew it, once upon a time, I saw it from new eyes, a reflection of how my world used to look, growing up by the sea, playing pirates on the beach, looking for ruins in the woods, taking a boat to an untouched island.

All the feelings I hadn’t felt in a long time, all the memories I had long since buried about the beauty and impact of the rest of Walter Wick’s body of work, they all came rushing back to me. I soon found and joined the Can You See What I Spy discord, a community of other enthusiasts online. I began looking at the books again, seeing the spectacular craftsmanship in every single one of Wick’s brilliant photos. And of course, I began taking photos of my own, beginning the Visualize project.

And... I had found it. I could finally express my love of the sea and my love of New England through the very medium with which Treasure Hunt was made. What began as a little look into childhood memories had become a recurring, powerful source of inspiration, that shook me out of my creatively-dead rut and led me to create something I am very proud of. I have Treasure Hunt to thank for bringing the wonder back to me.

The Future

I Spy Treasure Hunt is a game that will more or less never be replicated. All of the companies involved have either dissolved or moved on. PC games are no longer made in the same way. Photo editing and photography is easier now than it has ever been. Even I Spy and the rest of Wick’s catalog has fallen out of mainstream relevance. There will never really be anything else like it, and that’s okay!

What we have instead is something better than a sequel, we have a group (or a niche, as it may be) of people who grew up with this game and remember it fondly: people who were inspired by it, who became interested in pirate history, or started to do photography of their own. And of course... people who see themselves in it, echoes of growing up by the sea and playing pirates with friends, looking for treasures on the beach.

Whatever it means to you, I’m glad we’ve chosen to remember it on this day.