Sometimes the most entertaining games are also the simplest, and GeoGuessr is a perfect example. What do you need to do? Before your eyes is a location in Google Street View chosen completely at random, and your goal is to determine exactly where on the map that place is. While you can rely on luck and pick any spot, a bit of detective work can take you far—or in this case, very close...
A game that definitely stole a few months of my life was “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” Chasing the lady in red around the world wasn't just guaranteed entertainment; it also gave players a healthy dose of geography in a very short time. In some cases, the clues could be very subtle or genuinely absurd, but a little reasoning was enough to lead you to the right place.
Putting Your Detection Skills to Work
Reasoning will be your main weapon in GeoGuessr. There's no one to chase and no clock threatening you; instead of determining where you should go, you actually have to establish as precisely as possible where you are.
In other words, GeoGuessr turns the world into your playground, courtesy of Google Street View. You might appear in the middle of the desert, by the ocean, in the city, or next to a small cabin in the woods. Any place captured by Street View has the potential to be your next target, and the clues are there, though you need to know where to look. Vehicle license plates are usually blurred, as are people's faces.
But don't forget that the web is on your side. The name of a hotel or restaurant, signs and posts in a specific language, phone numbers, temples, buildings... the answer might be just a search away, though there will also be times when the Street View image is too poor to gather enough information. On my first attempt I managed to score over twelve thousand points, and before I knew it, I had already spent about an hour inside GeoGuessr.
The addictive component is much more intense than it seems, and having options to share results on social media will likely tempt several of our contacts on both networks. A simple site to pass the time. But... be careful! It can be a black hole of procrastination.
