Puzzlotto brings a different kind of game (and a cash prize) to the App Store

Puzzllotto has been about as hidden as the lemurs you can see in the screenshot over there, for some reason -- the concept isn't real easy to grasp, and if you just stumbled across the "game" in the App Store, odds are that you'd think you had $5 stolen from you. But there is a weird story hidden here, both literally and figuratively. David Lanham and Mike Lee contributed to the Puzzllotto, which features unusual game play -- there's just a picture of a forest, and a few eyes that you can touch to make lemurs and other creatures pop out. I would tell you more, but I haven't actually figured it out yet -- there's a "fosa" that will scare away any lemurs or butterflies you've summoned, and I know that the butterflies are basically a progress meter, but other than that I have no idea.

But Puzzllotto isn't just that perplexing app -- it's been dubbed "fundware" by Lee, and 10% of the proceeds from the game will go to the Madagascar Fauna Group to support the habitats of lemurs, fosas, and butterflies. And it's actually a puzzle to be solved, with a cash prize -- if you can be the first to figure out the "puzzle" behind Puzzllotto, United Lemur will give you a cash prize out of their prize pool, currently at $5000, and growing every day for 31 days. If no one claims the prize at the end of the 30 days, all the money will go to charity, project over. You can follow updates on their Twitter -- it sounds like no one's claimed any prizes yet, which is no surprise -- if there are any clues in the app, they're very, very hard to find. United Lemur claims that there is a game in there (and that it is worth the $5 entry fee), but so far, all players have found is a few screens of the weird lemur puzzle.

But it is a different kind of game -- a cash prize handed out by a flabbergastingly tough puzzle disguised as an App Store game, all designed to benefit a charity. Lee says on his blog that they wanted to make a game where players couldn't cheat by telling each other the answer, but maybe they didn't realize that part of the fun of Myst is sharing the strategy with other players. And if you don't want to shell out the $5 on Lee's word, it might be fun to just wait until the solution gets posted somewhere anyway. Have you solved any part of Puzzllotto yet?
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