GeoGuessr in Space

I've spent too much time in my life playing GeoGuessr, trying to work out where in the world I am from little more than a road sign, a distant mountain or the architecture of a nearby building. But what if you took away the roads, the signs and pretty much everything else that makes Earth recognisable? What if, instead, you had to work out where you were somewhere in the Solar System?

That's the idea behind SpaceGuesser, a planetary guessing game that takes the familiar GeoGuessr formula and launches it into space.

The premise is simple. You're dropped into a panorama somewhere in the Solar System and have to work out where you are. Rather than exploring a Google Street View image, you're looking around landscapes captured on other planets and moons, or examining orbital imagery collected by spacecraft during planetary missions.

Around half of the rounds feature ground-level panoramas, drawn from a collection of more than 14,000 images. Many of these were captured by NASA's Mars rovers, including Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance.

The remaining rounds take you away from the planetary surface altogether. These use orbital views rendered using the SpaceMap project, allowing you to explore mapped worlds throughout the Solar System. This means that your next guessing challenge might involve recognising a Martian crater, identifying a landscape on one of Jupiter's moons or figuring out which distant world a spacecraft was photographing during a flyby.

SpaceGuesser currently offers several ways to play. You can start with a tutorial to get accustomed to navigating the imagery and making your guesses, try the daily challenge to compare your score with other players, or jump straight into a quick game. There's also a multiplayer mode where you can create a lobby and invite friends simply by sharing a game code.

SpaceGuesser is the latest addition to a growing collection of games inspired by GeoGuessr. If you'd like to explore some more geographical guessing games, take a look at my earlier round-up of Eight Free Alternatives to GeoGuessr.