How to play Pin Drop, a free map game where you pin cities on a globe with friends
We name a city. You pin it on the globe.
- Players
- 1–8 (solo too)
- Length
- ~8 min
- Type
- Geography
- Price
- Free
Pin Drop is a geography game for a group. Each round names one place, like Lagos, Nigeria or Perth, Australia. Everyone spins the same globe on their own phone or laptop and drops a pin where they think it is. When the round ends, the map flies to the real spot and shows every pin with a line to it and how many kilometres off it was.
You don't have to know the answer to score. A pin in the right part of the right country still earns most of the points, so everyone has a go every round. The arguments start when someone puts Perth on the wrong coast.
Free, no app and no sign-up to join — players hop in with a 4-letter code on their own phone.
How to play Pin Drop
The host picks the number of places
Eight places is the default. Five makes a quick game and twenty a long one. In the game setup the host can also pick the map (the whole world or one continent), the kind of places (capitals, big cities or both) and the difficulty.
Everyone joins with the room code
Players type the 4-letter code on their own device. Pin Drop works with one to eight players. On your own it is you against the map, and you can add Blips (the site's computer players) if you want someone to beat.
A place appears at the top
It always comes with its country, so there is only one Santiago in play. Drag to spin the globe and pinch or scroll to zoom. The full-screen button gives you the whole screen for the map.
Tap to drop your pin
Tap the globe where you think the place is. Tap somewhere else to move the pin. When you are happy, press Lock in my pin. If time runs out before you lock, the pin counts where it is.
The reveal shows who was closest
The map turns to the real spot. Every pin is shown in its player's colour with a line to the answer, and a list ranks everyone by distance. The round ends early once everyone has locked in.
What Pin Drop looks like
How scoring works
A pin within 25 km of the place is a bullseye and scores 1,000 points. Further away, points drop off smoothly with distance. On the whole-world map a pin 500 km off scores about 730 and one 1,000 km off about 520. A pin on the other side of the planet scores close to nothing.
On a single continent the scoring is stricter, because everyone already knows roughly where to look. In Europe a pin 200 km off scores about 700.
Locking in early adds a small bonus of up to 100 points. The bonus shrinks with your distance, so a fast pin in the wrong ocean earns nothing extra. The host can turn the speed bonus off.
The closest pin each round wins the round crown, and the highest total at the end wins the game.
Tips for winning Pin Drop
- Get the continent right first, then the country, then zoom in. Most of the points are in being roughly right.
- Country borders are drawn on the globe. If you know the country but not the city, aim for its middle, or for the coast if it's a port.
- Capitals are often not the biggest city. Canberra is not Sydney, and Ankara is not Istanbul.
- Don't wait for perfect. A good pin now beats a slightly better one five seconds later, because of the speed bonus.
Frequently asked questions
Is Pin Drop like GeoGuessr?
It is the same idea, guess a place on a map and score by distance, but you get the name of the place instead of a street photo. It is free, it runs in the browser, and everyone in the room plays the same places at the same time.
How many players does Pin Drop need?
One to eight. On your own it is a solo map quiz. With friends it is a race to be closest. You can fill empty seats with Blips, which drop their pins somewhere a few hundred to a few thousand kilometres off.
Which places come up?
About 650 places: every national capital, plus big cities and well-known smaller ones like Venice, Kyoto and Cusco. Easy draws places everyone has heard of. Hard draws smaller capitals and cities most people couldn't point to. Once you have seen a place, the game shows you new ones first.
Can we play just one continent?
Yes. The host can pick Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas or Oceania in the game setup. Every place then comes from that part of the world, and the scoring gets stricter to match.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. Drag to spin, pinch to zoom and tap to drop your pin. The full-screen button makes the globe fill the screen, which helps on small phones.
Where does the map data come from?
The places, their positions and populations come from Natural Earth, a free public-domain map dataset. The globe is drawn from Natural Earth's country shapes too.
Is it free?
Yes. It's free to play and free to host, and you don't need an account to join.
Free, no app and no sign-up to join — players hop in with a 4-letter code on their own phone.