Google Maps Geo Location games
Came across this site a few moments ago http://geoguessr.com/ and absolutely loved the design. You are given a street view of somewhere on the planet and you have to guess where you are (I didn't realise that South America and the outback resemble the Karoo so closely).
It's so great that games like this that use the vast Google Maps dataset can be made. Lovely sense of exploration and tangential learning going on (i.e. that countries you thought looked one way actually look completely different, besides thinking every outback/velt looking scene was in Southern Africa when it wasn't, I mixed up Europe and Canada a lot too)
Did some digging and found these:
http://www.map-race.com/ You are zoomed into the standard top down google map view, guess what city you are in. Pity it is only US cities. Design is still fun
http://www.mapcrunch.com/ So this isn't really a game, it was supposed to just drop you in a random place for you to look at. But some people made a game out of it (here's an example playthrough) whereby you tell mapcruch to put you in a city and hide your location and you must find your way to an airport to get home. Really love this, almost want to make a similar game but incorperate flight routes (from, err.. places which have these sorts of infos publically and easily available), drop you in a city and say "get to Istanbul" or something similar.
http://pursued.nemesys.hu/ You are dropped in a city and are being chased by someone, are allowed to walk around and see what is about with street view. you have 5 minutes to figure out where you are and phone your friend to pick you up. You really need a good connection for this one since it actually has some pace to it.
http://wonder-tonic.com/zombie/ dropped in the city (street view) and zombies are chasing you. You have to survive for as long as possible. Again, needs a good connection.
It is a bit annoying that these games are limited by my bandwidth issues, my 1mb line takes a good few seconds to load up all the images everytime I moved which breaks the flow a lot (telkoooooooom)
So the above games use the location and the judgement of the player to find out where they are. Here are some games I found that use the Google Maps data in other interesting ways
http://www.mapstd.com/ Tower defense in your hood
http://www.walewijndenboer.nl/geoguns/# tanks rolling around your maps... just wished they could have used the building data to make obstacles for the tanks to maneuver around :/
http://www.class3outbreak.com/ Zombie Outbreak Simulator! Top down zombie killing in various (predetermined) locations around the world
http://www.tomscott.com/realworldracer/ Looks fun but I couldn't get it to work
http://chaosinyourtown.com/ ok not a game but an awesome example of how to use the data :D
This is obviously not an exhaustive list, if you find more games like this that are fun, share them here!
References (and more examples):
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/gaming-google-maps-with-street-view-games/
http://www.noupe.com/tools/collection-of-the-coolest-uses-of-the-google-maps-api.html
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-6-best-google-maps-games.html
& @creative630 (who shared GeoGuessr on Facebook where I first found it)
It's so great that games like this that use the vast Google Maps dataset can be made. Lovely sense of exploration and tangential learning going on (i.e. that countries you thought looked one way actually look completely different, besides thinking every outback/velt looking scene was in Southern Africa when it wasn't, I mixed up Europe and Canada a lot too)
Did some digging and found these:
http://www.map-race.com/ You are zoomed into the standard top down google map view, guess what city you are in. Pity it is only US cities. Design is still fun
http://www.mapcrunch.com/ So this isn't really a game, it was supposed to just drop you in a random place for you to look at. But some people made a game out of it (here's an example playthrough) whereby you tell mapcruch to put you in a city and hide your location and you must find your way to an airport to get home. Really love this, almost want to make a similar game but incorperate flight routes (from, err.. places which have these sorts of infos publically and easily available), drop you in a city and say "get to Istanbul" or something similar.
http://pursued.nemesys.hu/ You are dropped in a city and are being chased by someone, are allowed to walk around and see what is about with street view. you have 5 minutes to figure out where you are and phone your friend to pick you up. You really need a good connection for this one since it actually has some pace to it.
http://wonder-tonic.com/zombie/ dropped in the city (street view) and zombies are chasing you. You have to survive for as long as possible. Again, needs a good connection.
It is a bit annoying that these games are limited by my bandwidth issues, my 1mb line takes a good few seconds to load up all the images everytime I moved which breaks the flow a lot (telkoooooooom)
So the above games use the location and the judgement of the player to find out where they are. Here are some games I found that use the Google Maps data in other interesting ways
http://www.mapstd.com/ Tower defense in your hood
http://www.walewijndenboer.nl/geoguns/# tanks rolling around your maps... just wished they could have used the building data to make obstacles for the tanks to maneuver around :/
http://www.class3outbreak.com/ Zombie Outbreak Simulator! Top down zombie killing in various (predetermined) locations around the world
http://www.tomscott.com/realworldracer/ Looks fun but I couldn't get it to work
http://chaosinyourtown.com/ ok not a game but an awesome example of how to use the data :D
This is obviously not an exhaustive list, if you find more games like this that are fun, share them here!
References (and more examples):
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/gaming-google-maps-with-street-view-games/
http://www.noupe.com/tools/collection-of-the-coolest-uses-of-the-google-maps-api.html
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-6-best-google-maps-games.html
& @creative630 (who shared GeoGuessr on Facebook where I first found it)
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