Globetrotter XL is a geography quiz game, which may sound dull, but is actually quite engaging.
The play area is a map of the word -- initially, with borders in place. Your mouse pointer is a crosshairs, and the game names a city (e.g., Bologna, Italy). You've got a few seconds to locate and click on it. You are scored by how close you get, with a bonus for doing it quickly.
This is pretty easy for say, Tel Aviv, because Israel is a postage stamp of a nation, so you're bound to be close -- somewhat more difficult for larger countries (e.g., I'm pretty clear on where Beijing and Shang-hai are, but other cities in China...). And where is Reunion exactly? Indian Ocean somewhere, but do you remember?
At the harder levels, the borders go away, which makes things even tougher.
Oh, and when you click, a green flag appears on the map at the correct location, and a red flag where you clicked, so you can also learn some geography this way.
Shared online leaderboard, nice music, and that's it; a nice, clean implementation of a simple idea with some educational merit.
(Via Kim Pallister.)
This game further solidifies
This game further solidifies the fact that I know nothing about geography. Interesting game though, and I felt like I gleaned some small bit of info from fiddling around with it.
I was pretty great up until
I was pretty great up until the point that it started giving me stupidly unimportant cities in bigger countries like Brazil and China. The game seems to have a small problem with having me lose even when I feel that I'm doing perfectly. I still kept playing it, yet even as good as I am with geography in general, the standards are really high in the later rounds.
Annihillation Nation
I like the feel of destroying a city with a perfectly placed flag throw. Ultimately, I think DEFCON is a better game to play for geographic learning. I know where Djibouti is because I've positioned subs above it several times.
Hearts of Iron 2 taught me
Hearts of Iron 2 taught me the vast majority of my geographic knowledge. Unfortunately, this leaves me rather weak on countries that came into being after about 1939. I'm clueless on west Africa.
Edinburg has an 'h'
If it wasn't my favorite city, I'd not care so much.
Damn I miss Edinburgh...
Very useful for young children
Years ago when all we had was an Atlas, no such thing as computer maps, we used to play a similar game. I think this is very useful for your children to learn basic geography. Maybe the map could be a little bigger or offer some kind of zooming capability.
Google Earth?
Gill- perhaps the game maker could link to the google earth area of it? Or if we want to make this hypertext friendly, they could even throw in the wiki link, or include various facts about the city, if the gamer is inclined to learn about it. I know that if you're playing this thing you're on the internet in the first place, but the ease of it might make some people click the link on a whim and check the place out.
Education
Actually, I might use this in my classroom (I teach high school history and humanities).
Knowing a city by destroying it
I know most of my knowledge of English geography by playing "Kingmaker," and romping around the country with an army of knights and archers... Damnit. Gotta take Shrewsbury!
Unfortunately the geography isn't 100% accurate, as my friend from Cumbria pointed out about several northern towns that got moved a few a hundred kilometres or so.
love it!
i love this game.
i really like the idea of having to "approximate"--that is, you don't necessarily get a "bad" score if you have to guess the general "radius" of the target city/country. It also starts teaching you to make sense of what you're seeing--so you think, "ah, that's a port city, right? so it has to be on the edge somewhere, and i know it's not this one..."
very challenging and very fun. got to about level 9.