GeoGuessr wonders how well you know the world
Last updated July 5th, 2024
I’ve recently discovered a rather addictive game called GeoGuessr, and it is a real challenge indeed, especially for those who claim to be real Geography nerds and seasoned travellers!
Basically it shows you random spots from around the world in Google Map Street View, and you have to guess where in the world you are just from looking around and navigating the map. It sounds like it should be easy, but there really are a lot of nondescript looking places around the world! You then pin a place on the map where you think you are, and the game tells you how accurate (or wildly wrong) you are and awards you points accordingly.
Think I’ve proved pretty decent on the few runs that I’ve had so far, I usually manage to guess the region I’m in about 80% of the time, and quite often I get the country right too *preens*. But there was also the time I thought the Irish words were some sort of -stan language, so… yeah I have my moments…
I’ve always loved me a good geography game. I was really sad when they closed down the facebook game GeoChallenge on Facebook – my family was ridiculously competitive about it – and I still play the occasional Traveler IQ challenge just to keep those skills sharp.
This game was created by Anton Wallen as a Chrome Experiment, but it seems like lots of people have happily jumped on the bandwagon, with articles asking experts on their protips and other tips to get high scores.
Well here are my tips for what it’s worth:
- Some of the pictures might just seem mighty impossible to figure out where on earth you are, but my advice is to go with your gut feel and you might just surprise yourself with your own accuracy
- The first thing I do is to look out for signages which usually give the best clue of what region you’re in, if not, the architecture, flora, skin colour of people (faces are blurred) and just the tone of the picture usually give some indication as to where in the world the photo might have been taken.
Whether you turn out to be right or woefully wrong, you would have learned a little something about a far flung corner you’ve never thought of in your life.
Go try it out at GeoGuessr.com! This is definitely more educational and interesting than Candy Crush!
If you are still having fun playing GeoGuessr, you might be interested to know that its port has just been released to the Android platform.
Here’s the link: http://goo.gl/CKVCd
Thanks Felipe! I’m still on iOS though, so I guess I’ll have to stick to the desktop version for now~
For the last image in the article you say “The answer is somewhere on the Northern tip of Darwin, Australia.” The marker labeled ‘A’ is actually a couple of hundred kilometres south of the city of Darwin. A more correct statement would have been “somewhere on the northern portion of the Northern Territory.”
Thanks for that Rubai, I didn’t look too closely at the actual location, oops!
difficult by site alone.. more travels needed. Fun little site to make you feel even more grounded.