You open your eyes and you’re in an unfamiliar place. You don’t know how you got there, you seem to have total amnesia, and you think to yourself ‘Where the *bleep* am I? No, not the plot for some 70’s B-movie, but my attempt to infuse a little drama into‘GeoGuesser’, a browser based game that uses Google maps to virtually insert you on some random location in the world and asks you to guess where it might be. The closer your guess is to the actual spot, the higher your score. Very simple, and somehow delivers a highly engaging game experience.
Now this being Google Maps, you have quite a bit of interactivity. You can look around you in a full circular 360 degrees, walk around, and go nearer to objects or further away from them. You will quickly develop simple strategies which you don’t actually ever have to think about in the real world. The first thing you start to look for, for example, are signs with any kind of writing on them. The language or characters used are amongst the most valuable clues. Other questions you will start to be mindful of: are the cars/signs on the left or right hand side of the road, what is the vegetation/landscape like, does the environment look well off or poor, etc. But don’t expect to recognize any landmarks; you will very likely NOT be plonked down in Times Square or on the Champs D’elysee, but rather some dirt road in the middle of nowhere in Australia or Brazil or someplace.
Here’s some random highlights with commentary:
Ok, so I see the writing on those signs, is that Korean? Japanese? Chinese? It seems generally orderly and the roads seem maintained, so I’m guessing either Korea or Japan.
Aha! English. A modern office building, and it does not look like the US to my eye. UK or Australia or some English speaking ex colony, maybe? The light isn’t so bright, so I’m guessing it’s in Europe. I could look up RBS international in Google, but lets walk around a little bit first.
‘Bus Vannin?’ A quick Google search shows that the bus company is from the Isle of Man. Another Google search showed that the Isle of Man is right to the left of the main British Isle. Are Google searches allowed in the rules of this game?
BAM! My closest guess to date. Can you beat that?
Great. A dirt road with trees, that could be anywhere. I walked around a ton and it just went on and on, road and trees, no signs anywhere, no cars. I don’t even remember where it turned out to be located. It seems like two out of three locations are like this, by the way, with hardly any landmarks or identifying features.
Spoiler alert:
I did some research and got a map that shows the street-level photography that was done by Google to date. If you need to guess, the map below can help you eliminate large swaths of the world from consideration.
[expand title=”Click here to show the map”]
Click to see the source.
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The Verdict:
A brilliant game and a great implementation of the Google Maps API. The game itself is quite engaging and original, with a problem solving/detective element.
If you play a round, score well, and are quite pleased with yourself, you could send a link to your friends that will present them with the exact same locations, and then compare your score to theirs (which I thought was a very nice game design element).
One thing though: they really should spell out if Google searches are allowed in the rules of this game. I would hope that they are, because it would make looking for clues a much more rewarding prospect, when you can look them up once you find them.
Go here to get started with GeoGuesser [via].
