How to Play GeoHiders

The complete guide — rules, scoring, strategy, and how to host a great room.

The 60-second summary

GeoHiders is a multiplayer hide-and-seek game played on a map of the entire world. One player at a time is the hider: they pick any spot on Earth using Google Street View, write three short clues, and challenge the rest of the room to find them. Everyone else are seekers: they read the clues, study the map, and drop a pin where they think the hider is. The closer your pin lands to the real location, the more points you earn. After a few rounds, the player with the highest total score wins.

Step-by-step: a full round

1. Create or join a room

From the landing page, click Create Room if you want to host, or Join Room if a friend has already given you a code. Room codes are six characters long (letters and numbers) and case-insensitive. You can also share an invite link of the form geohiders.com/?code=ABC123 — anyone who opens it lands directly in your room.

2. Lobby setup

Once you are in the lobby, the host can adjust room settings: number of rounds, time limits for hiding and seeking, and whether the room is locked to its current players. New players appear in the lobby list as they join. When everyone is ready, the host hits Start Game.

3. The hiding phase

One player is randomly chosen as the hider for the first round. The hider is dropped into a full-screen Google Street View viewer that begins at a random worldwide location. They can:

• Pan and zoom freely through Street View.
• Use the world map mini-view to teleport to any country or city they like.
• Drag the orange "pegman" anywhere on the map for an instant Street View jump.
• Lock in their hiding spot when they find a place they like.

After choosing a location, the hider writes three short clues — one sentence each. The clues are sent to all seekers at the same time. The hider does not see the seekers' map or any of their guesses.

4. The seeking phase

Seekers see the three clues, an interactive world map, and a countdown timer. They study the clues, zoom in and out of the map, and drop a single pin where they believe the hider is. Pins can be moved as many times as you want until time runs out or you lock in your guess. Once you confirm, your pin is final for that round.

5. The reveal

When all seekers have guessed (or the timer expires), the game reveals:

• The hider's true location, complete with a Street View thumbnail.
• Every seeker's pin, with a line drawn from their guess to the truth.
• The distance in kilometers from each guess to the real spot.
• Points scored, based on how close each seeker came.

6. Next round

A new hider is selected and the cycle repeats. After all configured rounds finish, a results screen shows the final scoreboard and who won.

Scoring explained

Each seeker's score for a round is calculated from the distance between their pin and the hider's true location. The closer you guess, the more points you earn, on a curve that rewards near-perfect guesses far more than "in the right country" guesses:

• Under 1 km: a near-perfect score (~5000 points). Extremely rare unless the clues are very specific.
• 1 km – 50 km: excellent guess, typically 3000–4500 points.
• 50 km – 500 km: in the right region, 1500–3000 points.
• 500 km – 2,500 km: right continent or correct nearby country, 500–1500 points.
• Beyond 5,000 km: almost no points; you were guessing on the wrong continent.

The hider does not score for their own round. Their job is to write fair clues — too easy and seekers get a free lunch, too hard and nobody gets close.

Hiding strategy — tips from experienced hosts

• Avoid the obvious skyline. Eiffel Tower, Times Square, Sydney Opera House — fun for new players, terrible for experienced ones. The point is to write clever clues, not to give away the location with the imagery alone.
• Look for ambiguous environments. A small village in the Alps could be Switzerland, Austria, Italy, France, or Slovenia. A beach with palm trees could be a dozen countries. Ambiguity creates a fun guessing game.
• Use cultural clues, not just geographic ones. "The script on the road sign uses three writing systems" is more interesting than "I am in Japan."
• Make one clue obviously true and one clue intentionally vague. The third clue should be the tiebreaker — specific enough that someone who has been paying attention to the others will narrow it down.
• Beware of license plates and store signs in Street View. Tech-savvy seekers will read them. If you hide outside an obvious landmark, do not zoom in.

Seeking strategy — how to climb the scoreboard

• Read all three clues before opening the map. Your first instinct is usually wrong; the third clue often flips the answer.
• Eliminate continents first. If the clues mention vehicles driving on the left, the Northern Hemisphere, or a Spanish-speaking country, you can rule out 80% of the world before zooming in.
• Use the language of clues as evidence. Hiders often unintentionally reveal where they have been: someone who says "the corner shop" probably grew up in the UK, while someone who says "the corner store" probably grew up in North America.
• Drop a "safe" pin early, then refine it. If you lock in a guess at the equator and forget about it, you will lose huge points. Always have a pin somewhere on the map.
• In rooms with experienced players, distance matters more than continent. Even if you are unsure of the country, pinning the right city in the right country is worth a lot more than pinning the wrong city in the right country.

Hosting tips

• Match the player skill. If you are playing with casual friends, lean on famous landmarks and easier clues. If you are playing with map nerds, hide in remote areas and write devious clues.
• Use the chat. Between rounds, react, banter, and trash-talk in the in-room chat. It is what makes the game fun.
• Mute when you need to. The mute button silences in-game sounds (ticks, pin drops, reveals) without affecting your microphone — useful if you are playing on voice chat in parallel.
• Use the URL share trick. Instead of dictating "A-B-C-1-2-3" over voice, copy the URL from your browser and paste it in your group chat. Anyone who opens it lands in the join modal automatically.

Common pitfalls

• "I was hiding in the ocean." Street View only works in places that the Google Street View car has driven. If you try to drop a pin in the middle of the Pacific, you will get no imagery, and the game will not let you confirm.
• "I disconnected mid-round." If your network drops and you reconnect within a minute, you will rejoin the same room with the same nickname. If you take longer, you will be removed and the game will continue without you.
• "The map froze." Hard-refresh the page (Ctrl+Shift+R / Cmd+Shift+R). Your nickname and room code are remembered in your browser's local storage and you will rejoin automatically.