GeoGuessr

Game is great, been playing GeoGuessr since long before they had an app and even pro. The game is amazing and one of the best out there. The app, something to be desired. They constantly throw these silly “features” around that just take away from the experience. The latest “improvements” include a way to spend your coins to re-roll your map…. But you spend it and it will just “re-roll” to the same map more than half the time. There’s all these new motions such as the zoom in to the solution once you submit, but the latest update extends the time to showing the solution and half the time the map closes. These bugs are all existent for nothing, the “features” added don’t improve anything about the user experience. Geoguesser has always been strongest with simplicity. Do away with the silly app changes and over complex “rewards” etc. Monetize on time played and map availability, Google API costs can be high so that makes sense. Don’t charge for coins that are only usable for “rerolling” the map when it almost always gives you the same map again. Unplayable on iOS atm until things get back to basics.

I used to play this game many years ago when it was completely free, and have been hesitant to pay for it until now. I really want to give this app five stars, but as a paid app I see a flaw that makes it slightly frustrating for a product that is otherwise flawless. The big problem I see is that with ranked play (which I really enjoy by the way) has a tendency to pick locations that aren’t that random. For example, I have gotten Christmas Island more times that mainland United States. I also land in the US territories more often than the US and Canada combined. Central Asia can be quite rare to get, and being a populated country I’m a bit surprised Japan doesn’t show up more often… or South Korea. It has a huge tendency to pick European countries and especially Eastern European countries. I get the feeling that countries are weighted equally, which is cool because you get to see lots of small countries. However, I wish that certain regions of the US, Canada, Brazil and Japan were weighted equally against countries of a similar size. It would make the locations feel a bit more random, rather than constantly getting the numerous Baltic or Balkan countries where it has a strong tendency to choose from.

Seriously I never realized how much of the world is bare blank empty roads lined with various shades of green and brown. So yeah you can tap for a looong time before you find a clue. But once you get that little bit of information- a language, a highway number, a road sign- then it gets addicting. If you land in rural Russia and don’t read the language then yeah you’re done for. There a tendency to repeat certain places a lot... Russia, Canada, Brazil... it’s almost as if they’re enormous countries or something. But one time the game put me in a small Canadian town in front of a building with a Canadian flag and a map of the town! Ya just never know. One thing I would like is some indication of how far you’ve traveled from your previous location. After tapping my way through Alaskan wilderness for awhile Ive likely lost track of distance and have no idea where I am in relation to the original drop point.