Do you miss traveling? Visiting other countries and cities? Do you even just miss walking around your own city streets in a big crowd of other people? There hasn’t been much of that this year, what with… well, everything.
Just as importantly, do you miss playing GeoGuessr, the browser game that plopped you onto a random spot in Google Maps street view so you could try to guess where you were? These days you have to pay to play GeoGuessr—it doesn’t cost much, but I imagine the paywall keeps a lot of people away.
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you might like City Guesser. It’s a browser game that’s a lot like GeoGuessr, but it uses video and it’s free.
Start up a game and you’ll see a full-screen (sometimes even 4K) video of a city somewhere the world. The camera person typically walks around for a while so you can begin to gather clues as to where you are. When you think you know what city you’re in, click the Start Guessing button at the bottom of the screen. On the pop-up map, scroll around and make your guess, then see how close you were.
Sometimes the videos are a bit of a giveaway—in one I played, the camera tilted up to reveal the unmistakable Christ the Redeemer statue, so that was a pretty big (and tall) hint. Other times you can spot signs clearing stating where you are. But there are plenty of videos where you have piece together clues—license plates, storefronts, or a skyline that seems familiar—to make a solid guess. There’s audio, too, so maybe you’ll hear someone speaking a particular language in the background. If your guess is within a mile of the right spot, you’ll get a little burst of confetti to celebrate.
You can play City Guesser with locations from all over the world, or narrow your focus—there are options to play with just cities in the US, Europe, Canada, Asia, and other continents and countries. There’s even a game just for monuments.
Give City Guesser a try here. It’s not as challenging as GeoGuessr, but it’s honestly really nice to get out of the house and walk around in a crowd for a while, even if it’s only a virtual one.
