Elden Ring GeoGuessr Explained

FromSoftware’s 2022 Soulslike Elden Ring has become its most successful title yet, appealing to a wide variety of people through its massive content offering. Reasons include the satisfaction of overcoming challenging foes and finding treasure with mechanical benefits, but it can also be as simple as exploring the vast expanses of the Lands Between. Elden Ring’s huge world has more natural and artificial scenery on-display than any of FromSoftware’s prior games, and players are bound to learn its layout to some degree whether they’re marveling at the sights or plotting a course through particularly hazardous land.

This has led to many stretches of Elden Ring being permanently burned into players’ memory. From the coastline of Limgrave to the streets of Leyndell, there’s likely some beautiful place in Elden Ring that players can picture walking or riding through. As a test of that knowledge, some fans decided to bring the popular GeoGuessr game format to Elden Ring via the Lostgamer.io website. With single-player and multiplayer options, and even leaderboards available per map, it’s a fun way to recall one’s Elden Ring experiences, and a smart integration of one of gaming's sleeper hits.

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The Purpose And History Of GeoGuessr

Understanding what GeoGuessr is in the first place can build a lot of appreciation for how well it synergizes with games like Elden Ring. GeoGuessr is an indie browser and mobile game where participants guess locations based on real-world, panoramic images taken from Google Street View. It was first released in 2013 by Swedish IT consultant Anton Wallen, and was developed in a couple of weeks to simply facilitate visiting random locations on the Street View map. Publicly releasing on Google Chrome Experiments quickly revealed that many people shared this interest with Anton, and the game maintained a steady flow of dedicated players and updates, gradually building up a website and mobile apps of its own.

Modern GeoGuessr Has Expanded Into A Service Of Its Own

The COVID-19 pandemic going global in 2020 marked a shift for the geography game, driving so much traffic for it that there were over 40 million active player accounts by July 2022. Where those numbers lie now is unclear, but considering the GeoGuessr World Cup hosted in October 2023, the boon granted by the pandemic to games like Phasmophobia and Among Us wasn't wasted on GeoGuessr. By now, GeoGuessr has grown from a small, free geography trivia game into a service with multiple modes, quizzes, free and paid accounts, user avatars, competitions, dedicated streamers, and user-made content, among other things. It’s come a long way from its humble beginnings, and it only makes sense that imitators using fictional world maps would eventually crop up.

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How GeoGuessr Was Adapted For Video Games

One of those is Lostgamer.io, a website in open beta that is gradually building a list of popular video game maps to play GeoGuessr in. First released in November 2022 with a World of Warcraft map by the team that made Where In Fortnite, it is currently building GeoGuessr versions for titles like Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto 5, Genshin Impact, and more. Elden Ring was added in January 2023, and it shares the features built into the site along with every other title. Lostgamer.io currently offers the “classic” GeoGuessr game mode without any of the account restrictions of the latter, letting players choose from partial or complete maps built out of thousands of in-game screenshots. Complete with custom parameters, multiplayer, and leaderboards, it’s something every passionate open-world fan should check out.

Elden Ring And GeoGuessr Form A Powerful Pair

That goes double for seasoned Elden Ring explorers, as Lostgamer.io is a great place to test their knowledge of its unique geography. Choosing from Elden Ring’s five main regions or the entire overworld, players are taken into a reconstruction of the Lands Between using hundreds of thousands of screenshots stitched together to create over 8,000 authentic 3D panoramic locations. Movement works similarly to Google Street View, and players are left to investigate their surroundings before pulling up an overhead map to guess where they are. Like GeoGuessr, points are distributed based on the distance between guesses and answers, with high scores and winners announced at the end. It's a simple service at the moment, but more features are planned in the future.

Where Elden Ring GeoGuessr Can Go Next

Whether in a fictional world or real life, GeoGuessr has proven to be a compelling tool for teaching geography and common imagery in both settings. Thanks to it, Lostgamer.io should have a similarly strong future ahead as it accumulates more maps and features. Growing its game database seems to be the main focus right now, but there are plenty more universal site features it could add, some directly from GeoGuessr, and certain features could be tailored to the games themselves. At the very least, Elden Ring's DLC will probably add another map, and the underground could be explored in a map as well.

Among the features Lostgamer.io could borrow from GeoGuessr, quizzes may have the best synergy with Elden Ring. The lore found in Elden Ring’s item descriptions practically write questions themselves, and combining that with fandom and build meta trivia could easily fill an integrated quiz show. For more Elden Ring-themed additions, modes requesting the names of nearby equipment or locations could be added, and all of this could culminate in an adaptation of GeoGuessr’s Maprunner board game mode where players need to contend with hazards and items while maintaining a high enough score. GeoGuessr has already proved that its simple concept can go a long way, so Elden Ring’s take on it should serve its own fans just as well.