The Collection Chamber: TREASURE QUEST

Treasure Quest Is Unlike Any Other CD-ROM.

It is the first and only multimedia mystery challenge with a One Million Dollar Prize.

A Spellbinding Scenario!
Professor Jonathon William Faulkner has died, leaving an inheritance of $1,000,000 to the first student who can solve the mystery he created. You must search every corner of the professor's rambling 10-room mansion. He has hidden words and phrases in each room that fit together to form a quote. After you have assembled a quote for each room, you're only one step away from solving the mystery. Then... submit your claim for the one million dollar prize.

A Spiritual Guide!
Terry Farrell, Star of TV's "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," is your spiritual guide. She appears in 10 intriguing costumes, performing a different mystical role role in each room of the professor's mansion. Ms. Farrell is features in dozens of Treasure Quest video clips to assist you in your million dollar quest. Be sure to watch every enchanting move, and listen closely when she speaks.

An Original Soundtrack CD!
The original soundtrack for Treasure Quest features 11 new songs by recording artist Jody Marie Gnant. The audio CD captures the full flavor of the mystery . Listen carefully, because every word and note you hear, and every mental image you experience, may be an important clue!

Experience a totally new level of mind over matter in this multimedia mystery extravaganza. Treasure Quest will challenge and perplex, then reward you for your deductive prowess. And if you're good enough, you could win ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
One Million Dollar Prize
Totally Non-Violent
Intensely Entertaining
Perpetually Challenging
Stimulates Deductive Skills
The contents of the box and your ingenuity are everything you need to win the $1 million prize.
An interactive multimedia mystery on CD-ROM with a $1 million prize.
An audio CD of the original soundtrack, playable on your CD player or computer
Complete contest rules
How to submit a claim for the $1 million prize

~ from the back of the box

We have a fascinating piece of digital history to talk about today. One that wasn't designed for the casual player or even gamers, but for competition seekers. A multimedia CD-ROM that had a whopping $1,000,000 cash prize for the first person to write in with the correct 'ultimate solution'. It's a game called Treasure Quest, and the hunt began on April 10th 1996.

Published by a purveyor of video CDs who took over development from a small upstart called Soggy in Seattle, neither seem to have done much else in the gaming industry before or since. In fact, I can't see how either could've rallied up enough capital to make up that huge prize fund. Either way, they did and they even had enough left over to make the game itself. It consists of a series of confusingly obtuse collages that portray words, numbers and codes that help with the ultimate solution. To aid you, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine alumni Terry Farrell will pop up to offer strange clues and even stranger story beats.

There is a story, such as it is. The esteemed Professor Jonathon William Faulkner had died, but he has no family to leave his wealth to. So, he is to give it to one of his students on one condition; they solve the mind-bending puzzle scattered in his 10-room home. As you play, you will gradually learn little bits about the Professor's life but the story as presented is as uncoherent as the game itself. It's by design too, as there's every incentive for the developers to make the game as difficult as possible so that no one will get the answer before the deadline of December 31st 1999. But after just 7 weeks, someone did. And this is where the controversy starts.

You unlock other rooms by finding their teleport points. Some will be locked off though (left).
Terry Farrell pops up to give clues while role-playing different personas depending on the room you're in (right).

On May 31st 1996, a man named Paul Wigowsky submitted his solution, offering a detailed 16-page explanation of how he came to the answer. Due to a technicality, the submission was rejected and before he could resend it again, another 'player' by the name of P. Dreizen swooped in to claim the million dollar prize. Now, a not insubstantial gathering of puzzle fanatics on an online chat group - a burgeoning thing in the early days of the internet - smelled fowl. They hadn't heard of P. Dreizon, and grew suspicious of a single player solving the infamously complex puzzle on their own. They also didn't give a dull first name, leaving what was there to form an anagram of END PRIZE. Hmm. In all honesty, this was likely a whole load of nothing. A few years ago an (unverified) private investigator discovered a woman named Patricia was the likely winner, but that doesn't make for a good story now, does it?

As for the game? It's near indecipherable. The puzzle logic is so outside of the norm, with no way to gauge whether you're on the right path or what you're thinking is actually correct. To solve it back then, you'd have to win the actually money. It's so hard that I don't mind giving away some of the Ultimate Solution as it's as ingenious as it is confounding. Wanna know nothing, then stop reading now and head to the last two paragraphs. You have three seconds...

3...

2...

1...

Entering words in a word search. You may think you've found something, but the game often thinks otherwise (left).
Cracking a safe code. Are those numbers on the bottom right a clues, or do we have to look elsewhere? (right).

Okay, last warning. The final answer is "The Tree of Life". How do we get to that? Well, each of the 10 rooms contain a series of screens that will lead you to a word. Each word will lead you to a famous quote, and each quote will lead you to one of the 10 Sephirot (or spheres of existence) of the Kabbalah. This is also known as The Tree of Life. It's like an extreme version of Connections or Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Let's take a look at the Den - the first location available - and see how Mr. Wigowsky solved it.

The first word of the quote comes on the Last Will and Testament page. Click on the word "will" from the background text, and the document will be read aloud. One audio clips says "The clue is itself" so the word is "will". The text "3x" and audio "It's an article, one of three" means that the quote contains the word three times, and there are two other articles included. Another page shows an analogue clock reading 20 past 1 (points to 1 and 4, which equal 5), an audio of a sheep (or "ewe") and - more tellingly - the letter "U" repeated five times in the background. The word is "You" and it features five times. If you click on the clock, you'll get to the next page. It's hard to tell, but what we're looking at is a fancy protractor with the words "pendulum at 12:30 PM". This refers to the two opposite ends of a clock or a straight line, meaning 180° or turn around or opposite. The opposite of will is "won't" - our next word, and the 2x means it's used twice.

From the first room, we move down another string of screens beginning with a depiction of a horse and rider statue visible behind some holes. If you use your codebreaking skills, the cryptogram at top translates to "opposite of separate" while an audio clip says "come on, join the fun, join us". The word is "Join". We find the word "the" in another screen which includes the bible quote "you shall have no other gods before me". In red at the top are the numbers 16.5.29. These refer the relevant letters in the quote - 't', 'h' and 'e'. Lastly, a painting features some dance moves and the audio clip repeats "won't you dance with me". The final word is "Dance". Phew!

Two screens from the Den. Each will give you a word that make up the room's quote.
To the left is "will" while to the right is "the". Could you have figured it out on your own?

The final quote is "Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance." found in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. The word needed for the ultimate solution is "Will", and it relates to Keter or Crown sphere of the Kabbalah. There's no way I would've got any of this on my own - not a single word - and I challenge anyone to figure out the others without guidance.

Back to non-spoiler territory.

The game will not say "well done" if you're correct. There isn't a place to enter any answers for the ultimate solution (though smaller tangential puzzles like word searches or safe cracking do). As such, you have to write everything down and hope you're on the right path. To help you with this, Sirius Publishing sold a guide book but it won't provide any answers. It is dubbed The Official Resource Guide and acts more like a focused journaling tool to keep track of all the clues you've come across. It's invaluable to get an understanding the thought processes of the game designers, but my casual self mostly used it to get a clear view of the word searches.

I don't recommend going into Treasure Quest with the aim of solving it. It's a futile endeavour for one man alone, but if you're part of a group of puzzle nuts who would like to spend many months worth of gatherings trying to solve it, it might make for some fun social evenings in much the same way as the chat forums of 1996. You will need a wealth of real-world knowledge and research skills which makes it far beyond many people's tolerance, but it might be worth it. As a casual player, I wondered through the screens trying to figure out how the Ultimate Solution I had printed out in my hand fit with what I was seeing. That was enough to keep me engaged until I unlocked all of the rooms which is the closest the game comes to an in-game end game. A fascinating piece of digital history indeed.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox running Microsoft Windows 3.1 to get the game working on modern systems. Manual, Letter, Will, Brochure & Hintbook included. Soundtrack included as a separate download. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 592 Mb. Install Size: 877 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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