Unzoomed

About Unzoomed

Unzoomed gives you one city a day to identify from above. The game opens on a close satellite view with no place names. You can pan and zoom within the view the way you would on an online map, to look at a building, a street pattern or a stretch of coast.

You have six guesses. After each wrong one, the map unzooms: it pulls back to show more of the surrounding area, and the game tells you how far your guess was from the right place. So the puzzle starts hard, with a few blocks of rooftops, and gets easier as the river, the shoreline or the shape of the city comes into view.

The clues are whatever a satellite sees: the grid or tangle of the streets, roof colours and building materials, trees and parks, water, and which way the shadows fall. The answers come from cities all over the world, not just capitals; the game's list of places includes L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl.

Unzoomed was made by Benjamin Td and launched in early 2024. The site is available in English, German, Spanish and French.

How to play Unzoomed

1. Study today's satellite image; you can pan and zoom within the view.
2. Type the city you think it is and submit.
3. If you are wrong, the map zooms out to show more, and you see how far your guess was.
4. Find the city within six guesses.

Tips

• Look at shadows to work out north and south, and roughly how far from the equator you are.
• Street layout says a lot: a strict grid, a medieval tangle or a planned capital.
• Use the distance from your wrong guesses to narrow down the region.

Questions