Justified Pursuit: The Scavenger Hunt was a game used to promote the launch of FX Network’s new series Justified. In this game, players become deputies of Sheriff Raylan Givens and given the task of tracking a fugitive across the country. Each day during the promotion, a new clue was revealed along with three possible locations where the fugitive was sighted. If deputies chose the correct location, hidden content from the show might be revealed. Every correct answer resulted in an entry into a sweepstakes.

This site was built in Flash and made use of Flash Player 10’s built in 3D for parallax effects when panning between game states. User input was validated in Flash and stored in a mySQL database via PHP. I retrieved the current time from the server used that, in conjunction with user progress to determine which clues, if any, were available for play.

One unusual challenge encountered during this project had to do with Real Player. Users with Real Player installed are given the option of downloading media (through a contextual menu item in Flash and button layered on top of the Flash). When you are dealing with copyrighted content and owned by a network with particularly-astute legal department, that won’t fly. Needless to say, the problem was solved at the 11th hour (literally) and the promotion went off without a hitch.