A GeoGuessr Alternative for Teams: Location Guessing on Your Next Call

Why it works on a work call

Most people who have played GeoGuessr will tell you the same thing: you get dropped on some random road and somehow you are sure you have seen that style of bus stop before. It is great fun on your own. On a team call you want something slightly different, where everyone looks at the same place at the same time and then sees how close they all got.

So in Where Am I? the whole room gets the same location together. When the round ends, every pin shows up on one map with a line to the real spot. You do not need to be good at geography to do well, either. Most rounds are won by spotting something simple, like a number plate or which side of the road people drive on.

It also tends to get the quieter people talking. Nearly everyone knows one corner of the world really well, and it is often not the one you would expect.

How a round works

1. Look around. The street view fills your screen. Drag to turn round, and move down the road for more clues if the host has allowed it.
2. Drop your pin. Open the map in the corner, zoom in with a pinch or the scroll wheel, and tap where you think you are. Country and city names appear as you zoom.
3. Lock it in. You can score up to 1,000 points depending on how close you are. Getting the right country earns a bonus even if your pin is a long way off.
4. See the answer. All the pins appear at once, along with how far off each one was and a clue you could have spotted. When the game ends you get a map of every round.

Choosing a mode

• Free-for-all. Everyone guesses on their own. Start here.
• Teams. Two teams, and each one scores its best guess. If one person recognises the place, the whole team benefits.
• Teams, shared pin. Each team moves a single pin together and locks it in when they agree. The other team can't see it. This one gets people talking the most.
• Speed round. 30 seconds per location, and guessing early scores more. Handy if you only have a short slot, or your group has played before.
• Fixed view. You get one picture and can't turn the camera. This is the hard one.

You can also limit the game to one area: a continent, the UK, capital cities or famous landmarks. If everything is in one country, being 200 km out stops being a good guess.

Clues to tell your team about

Nobody needs to know the map of the world. Most rounds come down to noticing one thing, so it helps to mention a few of these before you start:

The game also shows a clue like these after each round, so people pick them up as they go.

A 15-minute plan for your call

1. 0:00 to 2:00, join. Paste the room link in the meeting chat. People just type a name to join, no account needed.
2. 2:00 to 3:00, explain. Read out the script below and mention a couple of the clues from the table.
3. 3:00 to 13:00, play five rounds. After each answer, ask whoever got closest what gave it away.
4. 13:00 to 15:00, finish. Look at the final map together, congratulate the winner and get back to the meeting.

Something like this works as a script:

“We’re all about to be dropped on the same street somewhere in the world. Have a look around. Signs, number plates and which side the cars drive on are all useful. Then open the map in the corner and put your pin where you think we are. Closest wins, and there’s a bonus for getting the country right. Please don’t post guesses in the chat until the answer comes up.”

Use your own team’s places

The round people remember is the one that turns out to be outside your own office. You can make a location pack with your team’s places, such as offices, home towns or where you went for last year’s offsite. Tap a spot on the map and the game finds the nearest 360° street view and shows it to you before you add it. Then pick the pack in the lobby and the game uses those places instead of random ones.

Check with people before you add their home street. A nearby landmark or the town centre is just as fun and doesn’t put anyone’s front door on a shared screen.

The daily challenge

If you’re signed in, you’ll see a daily challenge on your dashboard. Everyone gets the same five places each day, you get one guess at each, and there’s a leaderboard for your team. It takes about three minutes, which makes it an easy way to keep a remote team chatting between calls.

Making it fair for everyone

Street views are harder to read on a small phone screen, so a laptop or bigger display helps. If someone can’t easily join in with a visual game, pick something else. There are plenty of games on the full list that aren’t visual.

The street imagery comes from Mapillary, where people upload their own photos, and it loads through our site, so it should work on most work networks. It’s worth trying one round on the same network before the meeting just to be sure.