AERIALEHow to play & FAQ
Everything about how Aeriale works: the rules, hints, game modes, difficulty levels and how the subway game is scored.
How do I play Aeriale?
You see a satellite image of a place, with no labels. Type the name of the city (or country) and pick it from the list. You have five tries. Every wrong guess zooms the camera out, so you see more of the area, and tells you how far your guess was from the answer and in which direction: the arrow points from your guess towards the right place.
What do the distance and the arrow mean?
After a wrong guess, the game shows the straight-line distance between your guess and the answer, and an arrow pointing from your guess towards it. If you guessed Madrid and the arrow points north-east, the answer is somewhere north-east of Madrid. You can switch between kilometres and miles in Options.
How do hints work?
Press the light-bulb button next to the guess box to get a hint. You can use up to three per round, and each one is stronger than the last: the first is a broad clue (for example whether the country is landlocked, or the city's elevation), the second narrows things down (the continent, a population range, how many countries border it) and the third almost gives it away (the country, the exact population or the first letter). Which hint you get is picked at random from the ones that fit the game mode.
What are the game modes?
Cities: start close over a city and zoom out with every miss; play worldwide, by continent, by country, or only capital cities. Unzoomed: the whole city in one image, with five guesses and no zooming. Countries: start over a field, a desert or a coastline and name the country. Subway lines: draw a city's metro lines on top of the satellite image and get a score from 1 to 100.
What do the difficulty levels mean?
Worldwide and by continent, cities are ranked by how well known they are around the world: Easy, Medium, Hard and Super Hard. In a single country, the ranking is how a local would see it, from Super Easy to Hard. All mixes every difficulty and is the default.
What does “Unsolved only” do?
With Unsolved only switched on, the game only gives you places you haven't found yet in that mode and difficulty. Switch it off to replay everything. Solving a city counts both for All and for its own difficulty.
How is the subway game scored?
Each line you draw is compared with the real route. The closer your drawing runs to the real tracks, and the more of the line you cover, the higher the score, from 1 to 100. Lines you don't draw score 1. The map's score is the average of its lines, and a city counts as done once you score 50 or more. Show one line reveals a random line as a hint (it isn't scored) and Skip city shows the real network.
Where do the images come from?
The satellite imagery is provided by Mapbox and its imagery partners, including Maxar, with map data from OpenStreetMap contributors. Subway routes come from OpenStreetMap. Image quality depends on the place: big cities usually have sharper, more recent pictures than remote areas.
Why does a city sometimes start somewhere other than its centre?
Each round starts on a recognisable spot near the city centre, such as a main square, a cathedral or a central station, so that the first image already shows a known part of the city. As you zoom out, the camera drifts towards the heart of the city.
Is my progress saved?
Yes, on your own device. Your stats and solved places are stored in your browser, with no account needed. If you clear your browser's data or switch device, your progress starts again.
Can I play on my phone?
Yes. Aeriale works in any modern browser on phones, tablets and computers, with no app to install.
Is Aeriale free?
Yes, completely. The game is supported by ads, which never cover the image or the guess box.
A city is missing, or its image looks wrong. What can I do?
Use the Suggestions button (the pen-and-paper icon at the top of the game) and choose Suggest a city or Suggest an improvement. We read every suggestion.
How do I contact you?
Write to [email protected].