Million Piece Mission

“Million Piece Mission” is free to play and can be accessed on AirForcePuzzle.com by desktop and mobile devices.
The U.S. Air Force is launching the largest virtual multiplayer puzzle for the entire world to solve together. The puzzle, dubbed “Million Piece Mission” for its unheard of one million pieces, taps into the recent demand for jigsaw puzzles, while enabling people around the globe to get a sense of the challenge, camaraderie and purpose Airmen experience every day, all from the comfort and safety of their home.
“Million Piece Mission” was created with a 1.03 gigapixel image of the fourth building at the National Museum of the United States Air ForceTM, taken shortly after the building’s opening in 2016 by photographer John Opie.
“We are always looking for innovative ways to inspire and engage with the American public,” said Major Ross McKnight, Chief, National Events Branch. “The ‘Million Piece Mission’ is a challenging and interactive way to experience the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force while learning about careers and opportunities in the Air Force. The mission will require highly motivated, independent, and mentally tough individuals with attention to detail in order to complete. Those are the exact same traits we need in the next generation Airmen and, just like the puzzle, we want the best qualified applicant with the right job at the right time.”
To make the massive puzzle manageable for solving, it is divided into thousands of separate tile rooms, where points are earned by individual players and updated in real time to a universal leaderboard, creating friendly global competition.
To encourage users to tackle harder, less-defined sections of the puzzle, the tile rooms vary in level of difficulty. As users complete a tile room, they earn points based on the number of pieces they assemble, the amount of time spent on the section and the complexity of the image. Users have the option to play as a guest or create a username and password to save their progress and enjoy other benefits, including unlocking content, and interesting facts that, until now, could only be seen by visiting the museum in person.
As users enter the puzzle, they’ll view the full gigapixel image of the fourth building and see the cursors of other players working on the puzzle in real time. Users can work alone or with other players to complete a section of the puzzle and can even invite friends into a tile room to help complete the section.
“With school out, many camps closed, and not a lot of places to go outside yet, we hope this puzzle provides families and friends with something fun to do together. From across their living room or from across the country. Leave it to the U.S. Air Force to make the most technologically advanced jigsaw puzzle in the world,” said Jeff Maki, Senior VP, Group Creative Director, GSD&M.