Justin Patterson

Who this is

A game developer who signs the hunt's page as jpatt94. Path to Greatness is his 3D platformer about parkour movement, and his own page says it's "currently being developed by just me, Justin Patterson". The full game was meant to be the demo plus themed levels, with a progression he compares to Super Mario 64.

He also wrote why the demo exists. The game was taking longer than planned, he didn't have the money to keep working on it, and he didn't want "another boring Kickstarter or Patreon page". So the demo got a treasure hunt inside, announced with a trailer on February 5, 2021, and the first site asked for donations to a second Litecoin address, half for the game and half for the prize.

The music looks like his too. The game's YouTube channel posted Seconds of Dream as the Path to Greatness soundtrack in 2019, and in January 2021, a month before the hunt, an album of the same name came out under the name Justin Patterson. Three of its track titles turn up again as IVs in the hunt's key sheet, which is hard to put down to a namesake.

By July 2021 nobody had claimed the prize, and he took it to r/ARG, saying he was having a hard time finding the people who'd enjoy it. A month later he knew of no online community working on it, only a few private efforts in his DMs.

What the record says

Seven facts. Two come from the first site, which still lives under p2gtreasure.com/old/: the game with the plan to hire a level designer, and the hunt itself, cited to the Wayback capture from February 2021 because that capture is the first site as it went out. Then the trailer, the album, the soundtrack upload and the two Reddit posts, each dated by its own page. The record doesn't write down the link between the album and the IVs as a fact, because no single source says it. The collection page lays it out.

The record

static readonly author = party("Justin Patterson", {
  key: "justin-patterson",
  kind: PartyKind.Person,
  aliases: ["jpatt94"],
  about: "Game developer who hid a Litecoin treasure hunt in the gameplay demo of Path to Greatness, …",
  profiles: [profile("website", SITE), profile("youtube", …), profile("reddit", …), profile("twitter", …)],
  facts: [
    fact("Develops Path to Greatness, a 3D platformer about parkour movement, on his own, …", GAME),
    fact("Released the treasure hunt with a free gameplay demo of Path to Greatness …", CAPTURE),
    fact("Announced the treasure hunt in a 50 second trailer …", TRAILER, { date: "2021-02-05" }),
    fact("Released Seconds of Dream, a 13 track album …", ALBUM, { date: "2021-01-07" }),
    fact("Posted Seconds of Dream on the game's YouTube channel as the Path to Greatness soundtrack.", SOUNDTRACK, { date: "2019-03-18" }),
    fact("Shared the hunt on r/ARG with 3 LTC in the wallet, …", ARG, { date: "2021-07-25" }),
    fact("Wrote a month later that he knew of no online community working on the hunt, …", ARG_REPLY, { date: "2021-08-25" }),
  ],
});