Strata - Guess the City from a 3D Map | Daily Geography Game

What is Strata?

Strata is a free daily geography game in the spirit of Wordle, but instead of letters you read a city. Each day a real mystery city is rebuilt as a 3D map, and you start with almost nothing to go on — just the bare shape of the land. You have five guesses, and every wrong guess peels back another layer of the map, so the city slowly reveals itself the way an archaeologist uncovers a site.

Because the map is the real terrain of a real place — its hills, its coastline, the bend of its river, the grid of its streets — Strata rewards actually knowing what cities look like, not just memorizing trivia. It is a different kind of city guessing game from clue-based games and street-view games: here you are reading the landscape itself. Browse the wider daily geography games collection, or try PassportQ (guess the city from climate and geography clues), CityQ (a 3×3 geography grid), SkyQ (guess the flight), or RailQ (trains worldwide).

How to play Strata

1. Study the terrain. Every puzzle opens on topography alone — elevation, coast, and the overall footprint of the city. Read the landform before you guess.
2. Guess a city. Start typing any city name. The autocomplete handles common alternates, accented characters, and frequent misspellings.
3. Use the distance feedback. A wrong guess shows how far your guess is from the answer, so each try narrows the region.
4. Peel the next layer. Each miss reveals the next layer of the map: weather, then water, then roads, then buildings — turning a bare landform into an unmistakable city.
5. Solve in five. Name the city before your five layers run out to keep your streak alive. Choose the US + Canada pool for a gentler map or Worldwide for the full challenge.

The five layers

Strata reveals a mystery city one map layer at a time, and each layer is a different kind of clue. Topography comes first: mountains, valleys, and coastline give away whether you are looking at a harbor city, a river delta, or a city on a plain. Weather adds the local climate, splitting the map into hemispheres and climate zones. Water traces rivers, lakes, and shoreline — often the single most recognizable feature of a city. Roads expose the street grid and highways, and Buildings raise the skyline and show where density clusters. By the final layer, a bare landform has become a city you can name on sight. Every layer is built from real geographic data — read how Strata rebuilds a city.

Guess the city from above

Strata is played from the air. The diorama is an overhead view of a real city — the same read you get when you try to guess a city from a satellite image, except here it is an interactive 3D model you can study, and it starts stripped back to bare terrain. As the layers return, the puzzle shifts: mid-game you are matching rivers and street grids the way you would on a map, and by the final layer the buildings rise with real footprints and heights, turning it into a guess-the-city-by-its-skyline challenge. If you can pick out Chicago from the lakefront wall of towers or Rio from the ridgelines alone, this is your game.

Strata vs other geography games

Most daily geography games fall into two camps. Clue-based games like PassportQ and Worldle give you facts — temperature, population, a country silhouette — and ask you to reason your way to the answer. Street-view games like GeoGuessr drop you into a photo and ask where you are. Strata sits between them: it shows you the true 3D shape of a real city and lets the geography do the talking. If you like map-based deduction and want a fresh mechanic each day, it pairs naturally with the rest of the geography games and with free GeoGuessr alternatives.

Other daily games

• PassportQ
  Guess the mystery city from climate and geography clues.
• CityQ
  Fill a 3×3 geography grid with cities that fit each row and column.
• SkyQ
  Guess the daily mystery flight from airline clues.
• RailQ
  Guess the daily train route, from Amtrak to the Shinkansen.

Frequently asked questions

Is Strata free?

Yes. Every daily puzzle is free, with no account required. Premium is optional and only removes ads.

How does Strata work?

Each day a mystery city is rendered as a 3D map. It begins as bare terrain, and every wrong guess peels back another layer — weather, then water, then roads, then buildings — until you recognize the city. You get five guesses.

How is Strata different from other city guessing games?

Instead of text clues or a street-view panorama, Strata rebuilds the actual shape of a real city in 3D — its hills, coastline, river, and street grid — so you are reading the landscape itself rather than trivia.

What cities does Strata use?

Two modes. A US + Canada pool covers major metros from San Francisco to Toronto, and a Worldwide pool spans global cities picked for recognizable terrain and layout, from Rio de Janeiro to coastal and river capitals worldwide.

Does Strata work on phones?

Yes. The whole game, including the 3D map, runs in the browser and is built mobile first. Add the site to your home screen for a full-screen experience. No app store required.

Can you guess the city by its skyline?

Yes — that is the final layer. Buildings rise last, with real footprints and heights, so if the terrain and rivers have not given the city away, the skyline usually will. Early layers are the harder, purer test.

Is Strata like guessing the city from a satellite image?

Close, but live. Strata shows the same overhead view a satellite photo would, except it is an interactive 3D model built from real elevation and map data — and it starts stripped down to bare terrain instead of showing you everything at once.