About this idea
The idea came about when a few years ago, my husband wanted to give me a thoughtful and unique birthday present. This particular year, he hit a home run by creating a game for my birthday that included this puzzle box and a sequence of personalized emails sent to my inbox, which would help me solve the puzzle and retrieve my birthday surprise. The gift I received was a pair of diamond earrings by opening the puzzle box, but the real surprise was how many co-workers, friends and family, and connections on Facebook loved to play along. I thought how cool it would be to allow others to experience this just like I did for their special occasion
The “Can You Unlock It” platform has already been built. I have released a free game to the public to demonstrate the gameplay and to build a user list to promote the customized game product.
“Can You Unlock It” games are built with an immersible story which draws the user into a different world, and are given clues to solve a riddle that is customized to them by the gift-giver which is inserted seamlessly into the story line. ‘Can You Unlock It’ games are not just puzzles to be solved, they are entertainment and one of the most meaningful gifts you can give.
How it works is the gift giver would log in to create a game, select from a list of storylines to customize, and then generate clues leading to a secret word that unlocks the puzzle. The gift receiver is then sent personalized clues through text, social media, and emails where they would attempt to solve the puzzle via an interactive 3D model right from their device.
Impact
Finding the perfect gift for your loved one (friend, partner, family) for their special occasion can be stressful. Every single year, for every special person we have in our life we need to think about, search, buy, wrap, and present a gift in which we believe will bring a smile, a laugh, and conveys our feelings toward that person. The anxiety we feel is called “gift-giving anxiety”.
According to psychologytoday.com “it’s challenging to find affordable, thoughtful gifts given our limited time or finances, [...] we recognize that gifts are often wrapped in symbolic meaning and we obsess about it.” With this obsession to give the perfect gift and not disappoint the people we care about, we often turn to websites that offer personalized gifts, such as Etsy, so we can continue to convey that sense of meaning and thoughtfulness.
Personalized gifts was the number one search term on Etsy in 2020, and according to a 2021 report the global personalized gifts market is expected to grow by $7.37 billion by 2025. By using our platform, the gift-giver can create a gift only for them each year, which is completely unique and different, and stop stressing about it.
Our competition ranges from traditional gifts, customized gift vendors on Etsy, flower stores, groupon, and other online stores which offer personalized gifts (things remembered for example). I see these competitors as being supplemental to our product. For example, here is a standard gift of flowers AND a customized game about you/us and our life together. One gift would not exclude the other. In other words, why not BOTH and reduce that gift-giving anxiety.
What I'll do with $5,000
The $5000 will be used for the following:
$2000 - Marketing being planned out currently with a design firm
$1500 - Game production (animation, creative entities)
$1500 - Platform development improvements
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