A geography game without Street View
Terpano is a daily geography puzzle played on original illustrations. Free, no account, 11 languages. It is not a clone of anything — it is a different kind of picture.
The short version: a photograph tells you where it was taken by accident, and a drawing tells you only what the person who drew it chose to include. That one difference changes what the game is about. There is no number plate to zoom into and no shop sign to translate, so what is left to work with is the geography itself — light, terrain, vegetation, building material, the way people have adapted to the place.
Is Terpano free?
Yes, and there is no account. Progress is kept in your own browser, not on a server. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to cancel.
What is actually different about it?
The picture. GeoGuessr is built on street-level photography; Terpano is built on original illustrations drawn for the purpose. A photograph gives you away by accident — a number plate, a shop sign, a road marking, a reflection nobody meant to include. An illustration contains only what the illustrator decided to put in it, so every clue in the frame is a clue on purpose.
Does that make it easier or harder?
Different, and usually harder at first. There is no shortcut through reading a sign. What is left is the angle of the light, the pitch and material of a roof, which plants grow and how far apart, what the ground is made of. Those are learnable, which is the point.
Do I need to read the local language?
No. There is no text in the pictures at all, so a player who cannot read the local script is not at a disadvantage. On photo-based games that is rarely true.
How much is there to play?
84 illustrations are published and playable right now, and a new daily puzzle goes up every day. You can also work through the archive at your own pace.
Where is GeoGuessr better?
Coverage and competition. Street-level photography covers a large share of the world's roads, which no drawn library can match — Terpano has hundreds of pictures, not millions. It also has established competitive and multiplayer modes with a real player base. If you want to compete against people on real-world imagery, that is the thing built for it.
So who is this for?
People who liked the reasoning part more than the panning-and-scanning part, teachers who want a classroom-safe image with no advertising or street-level surveillance in it, and anyone who wants five minutes of it a day rather than a session.