https://www.wildguess.co.za/

If I’m able to, I’ll do a full run-down with pics in a week. In the meantime, you can jump right in. Here are some notes that might help:

  • This a detective-style game in which you’ll receive five chances to guess a mystery animal per case.
  • It’s based on animal sightings around the world, but those don’t represent their total habitat. Just where a photographer happened to snap a pic.
  • Each question, you’ll start by receiving the species name and geographical location. On the right you’ll be given a helpful panel of animal types, including a useful search feature to help narrow things down.
  • If you miss the first guess, you’ll be zoomed in to the exact sighting location and a roving binoculars which scans the habitat, showing the animal… somewhere in there.
  • The next two guesses, you’ll be given a little more of various facts about the animal.
  • At the very last guess, you’ll be given a list of five animals to choose from.
  • If you’re correct on the first guess you’ll get 5pts, all the way to 1pt for the final (correct) guess. You can play as many questions as you like, whenever you like. Your average will be tracked, and you can play as either guest or using an acct.
  • This is a TOUGH game, so don’t feel bad if you only average around 1pt, which already suggests that you’re pretty good with your animal ID’s.
  • The game is fan-made, so there’s a couple mistakes here and there which can be reported as necessary at the end of a question-cycle.

Finally, it’s trivially easy to cheat if you really want to. The most obvious way is to simply look up the species name at the beginning! 😁

https://www.wildguess.co.za/

    • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      8 days ago

      Oof, it’s definitely not an ego builder, unless you’re Sherlock Holmes.

      IIRC, the very best I did was to average 3.4pts some weeks. That was playing global-mode, but I did tend to use some helpers. Check these out, if you will:

      • For the species name, copy-paste it in to a search or LLM, making sure to add “etymology” and “do not name animal.” This will tend to give you a couple more whimsical details in Latin & Greek, which we all know a bit of via various ways.

      (EDIT just above, “etymology”!)

      • When the binocs are giving you absolutely nothing, view that image in a separate tab or window. The photo will generally be much clearer.

      • Sometimes in the very last step you’ll be given two animals amongst the five that are wildly similar. Two different types of kestrels, let’s say. In cases like that, I sometimes treat myself to backing up a step, which will preserve the target animal while generating four new random mystery animals. I’m not proud of myself, but it works, haha.

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
        3·
        9 days ago

        The most devious one it gave me was supposed to be a Cape Porcupine, an animal I very clearly know, as I was just talking about my choose encounter with one yesterday. The photo only showed a single quill on someone’s pants leg, making me think it was some form of stick insect, as I expected the photo to be showing the actual animal. How silly of me! 🤪