How to play HistoryGuesser
HistoryGuesser is a history guessing game. You are shown a 360° scene from a real historical moment and you guess two things: where it happened, and in what year. Both guesses are scored, and the closer you are the more points you take.
1. Explore the scene
Every round opens on a 360° panorama of a real historical moment. Drag to look around. The clues are in the picture: the architecture, the clothing, the transport, the tools, the signage, what has been built and what has not.
2. Guess where
Open the map and drop a pin where you think the scene is. Scoring is by distance, so a pin in the right country still scores well even when the exact street eludes you.
3. Guess when
Slide the year to your best estimate — anywhere from 3000 BC to the present. The year score decays as your date drifts, so a decade out still earns most of the points and a century out earns some.
4. See how close you were
The result shows the real place and the real year, the distance between your pin and the truth, and a short note on what actually happened there. Five rounds make a run, with a total score at the end.
How scoring works
Each round is worth up to 5,000 points, split between the place and the date. Location points fall away with distance — a pin a few kilometres out keeps most of them, a pin on the wrong continent keeps almost none. Year points fall away with the size of your dating error, measured in years for modern scenes and more forgivingly for ancient ones. A five-round run therefore tops out at 25,000. Playing signed in also earns XP, which moves you along the historical-figure progression and keeps your daily streak alive.
Ways to play
- Classic run
Five scenes, no timer unless you set one.
- Daily Challenge
One board a day, the same five scenes for everyone.
- Guess the Year
One scene, five guesses, ninety seconds — dating only.
- Era runs
Five rounds inside a single century band.
- Country runs
A nation's history, from its earliest scene to its most recent.
- Field guides
Annotated scenes that teach the dating cues.
- Community maps
Player-built collections, curated before they go live.
- Trivia arcade
Twelve questions, twenty seconds each.
Tips for dating a scene
- Transport dates a street faster than anything else: horses, trams, cars, aircraft.
- Look for what is missing — no electric light, no overhead wires, no glass curtain wall.
- Building materials and construction methods narrow a century even without a landmark.
- Uniforms, flags and lettering often pin a decade once you spot them.
- The field guides walk through these cues scene by scene.