GeoGuess

GeoGuess is a geography game where you are dropped at a random spot on Earth in 360-degree street-level imagery and have to work out where you are. There is no list of options and no hints on screen. You look around, move along the road, notice what the street signs, cars, plants and houses tell you, and then drop a pin on the world map. The closer your pin is to the real place, the more points you get - up to 5,000 points per round for a near-perfect guess.

How a Round Works

A standard game has five rounds. Each round starts in a new location. You can drag the view to look in every direction and click on the road to move forward, which is often the key to finding a sign or a town name a little further on. When you are ready, open the map in the corner, place your marker and confirm. The result screen draws a line between your guess and the real spot, shows the distance and your points, and then sends you to the next place. At the end you see your total out of 25,000, along with a map of all five guesses, which is a great way to see where your instincts were right and where they sent you to the wrong continent.

Game Modes

• Singleplayer - play at your own pace, with or without a timer, on the whole world or a smaller map.
• Country and continent maps - narrow the game down to one country or region when you want to learn it in detail.
• Multiplayer duels - go head to head against another player on the same locations. The better guess each round deals damage to the other player's health bar.
• Play with friends - create a private game, share the code and see who knows the world best.

Online modes connect you with real players, so you need an internet connection, and the street imagery itself loads live from the map service as you look around.

Looking Around and Placing Your Pin

Use the mouse to look around: click and drag to turn, scroll to zoom in on a sign, and click the arrows or the road to move. Hover over the small map in the corner to make it bigger, click to place your pin, and press the guess button to lock it in. On a phone or tablet, drag with one finger and pinch to zoom.

Clues That Good Players Use

Which side of the road?

If cars drive on the left, you can rule out most of the world and focus on places like the UK, Ireland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Indonesia.

Language and alphabet

Shop signs and road signs are the fastest clue. Cyrillic letters point to Eastern Europe or Central Asia, Thai script is unmistakable, and accents in Latin text can tell Portuguese from Spanish or Polish from Czech.

Road markings and bollards

Yellow center lines are common in the Americas, white ones in most of Europe. The little posts on the side of the road differ from country to country, and experienced players can recognise many of them.

Nature and climate

Red soil, palm trees, snowy pine forests, desert scrub - the landscape narrows the region even when there is no text at all. Combine it with the sun and you can often tell north from south too.

When in doubt, aim for the middle

If you know the country but not the city, drop your pin in the middle of the country. You still get a good score, and a wild guess in a corner can cost you thousands of points.

A Game That Teaches While You Play

After a few rounds you start noticing things you never paid attention to: what kind of license plates a country uses, how its houses are built, which side of the road its buses stop on. Some players even keep a notebook of bollards and plate colors. That is why GeoGuess has become a favourite in geography classes - every round is a small mystery, and every mistake teaches you something about a place you might never have seen.

For more brain games, try Wordle Unlimited or test your thinking in The Impossible Quiz.