A beginner's guide to Far Fetched
Far Fetched puts you on a real road somewhere in the world and asks a single question: which country are you in? You can look around, travel along the road and zoom in on anything interesting, then type your answer. There is no map to click. You name the country, and the closer you get, the more points you score.
This guide is for your first few games. It covers how to start, how scoring works, which modes suit new players and the handful of clues worth checking every time a new place appears. By the end you should know where to look first and how to turn a hunch into a sensible guess.
Starting your first game
You don't need an account to try Far Fetched. Go to the guest page and you can start playing straight away in your browser. If you would rather begin with something short and calm, open the daily challenge: five places, one guess for each, and no clock ticking.
Accounts are for players aged 13 and over, and anyone under 18 needs a parent's permission to make one. Younger players can still enjoy the game as guests, ideally with an adult alongside.
Moving around
Each place opens on a stretch of road. Drag the picture to look in any direction, and scroll with a mouse (or pinch on a phone or tablet) to zoom in. Arrows appear on the road; click one to move along it. Travelling a short way often pays off, because the next junction might have a road sign, a shop front or a bus stop with writing on it.
If you wander too far and lose track of where you began, press Back to start to return to the exact spot where the place opened. Two other buttons are worth knowing. The flag button reports a place that is broken or misleading, and Skip moves you on to the next place but counts as a wrong answer.
Typing your guess
When you think you know the answer, start typing the country's name in the guess box. It suggests names as you type, so you rarely need to spell the whole thing: the first few letters of "Kazakhstan" or "Côte d'Ivoire" are usually enough to bring it up. Pick the right suggestion and press Enter.
How scoring works
Every guess earns 3, 2, 1 or 0 points:
- 3 points for the right country.
- 2 points for a country that shares a border with the right one.
- 1 point for a country in the same sub-region. The game splits the world into 24 sub-regions, such as Western Europe, Southern Europe, the Balkans, Northern Europe, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, South America and East Africa.
- 0 points for anything else.
Worked examples
Say the place is in Portugal. Type Portugal and you score 3. Type Spain, which borders Portugal, and you still collect 2. Type Italy and you get 1: Italy doesn't touch Portugal, but both belong to the Southern Europe sub-region. Type France and you get 0. France borders Spain rather than Portugal, and the game places it in Western Europe, so it earns nothing for a Portuguese road.
Another example: you are in Germany and you type Austria. The two countries share a border, so you earn 2 points even though the answer was wrong.
What this means for your guesses
The scoring rewards getting close. If you are torn between Spain and Portugal, you can't score less than 2 with either, because they border each other. When you are only sure of the general area, choose a country with lots of neighbours rather than one at the edge: it gives you more ways to pick up 2 points.
A wrong guess never takes points away, and a skip counts as wrong anyway. That means a thoughtful guess is almost always better than skipping, because it might still land on a neighbour or the right sub-region.
Which mode to start with
Far Fetched has several ways to play. This order works well for most new players.
- Daily challenge. Everyone gets the same five places, and a new set arrives each day at midnight UTC. You have one guess per place, no clock, and a score out of 15. With no time pressure, it is the best way to practise looking carefully. Finish on consecutive days to build a streak, and share your result as coloured squares (green for 3 points, yellow for 2, orange for 1, white for 0) that don't give the answers away.
- Solo. A timed run on your own. Once you feel comfortable, Solo trains you to find the strongest clue quickly. You can keep it to one region while you learn, and runs covering the whole world go on the leaderboards.
- Global match. Up to 30 players see the same places in the same order, racing a clock of 1, 3 or 5 minutes (3 is the default). It's the liveliest mode, and the winner of a match with three or more players earns 25 Miles.
Relaxed modes with no clock
Survival gives you three lives. A wrong answer costs a life, a 1- or 2-point answer is safe, and naming the right country wins a life back, up to a maximum of three. It's a gentle way to find out how far your knowledge stretches. City Ten shows you ten towns and cities, scored out of 30, and suits anyone who enjoys reading street names and shop signs.
Later on there is also Ranked, for Far Fetched Pro members: rating-matched, three-minute Normal games for up to eight players, organised into seasons of three months.
Normal, Urban or Natural?
When you set up a game, you can often choose one of three versions. Urban places are in towns and cities, where there is usually plenty of writing to read. Natural places are out in the countryside, mountains and wilderness, so you rely more on landscape, plants and climate. Normal mixes the two. Many beginners find Urban easiest because language is such a strong clue, then move on to Natural once they have learned to read landscapes.
Your first five clues
When a new place loads, run through these checks in order. The first two are quick and can rule out huge parts of the world; the later ones help you choose between the countries that remain.
- Driving side. Look at parked cars, oncoming traffic and which side of the road vehicles keep to. Most countries drive on the right, so traffic on the left is a big clue. It points to places such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, most of South Asia and much of southern and eastern Africa. Which side of the road? explains this clue in more detail.
- Alphabet and language. Read any writing you can find: road signs, shop names, posters. Some scripts narrow things down to one or two countries. Greek letters point to Greece or Cyprus, and Korean Hangul to South Korea. Even in the Latin alphabet, special letters help: ñ points towards Spanish, ø towards Danish or Norwegian, and ő or ű towards Hungarian. How to read the world's alphabets goes much further.
- Road line colours. Check the paint. Yellow centre lines are standard in the United States and Canada and common in much of Latin America, while most of Europe uses white, with Norway among the exceptions. Road lines around the world looks at the colours more closely.
- Landscape and climate. Notice the plants, the colour of the soil, the shape of the hills and the look of the sky. Palm trees, pine forest, dry scrub and rice paddies each suggest a different climate. Reading landscapes shows how to use them.
- Buildings. Roofs, walls and paint colours change from place to place. Red-painted wooden houses are typical of Sweden, for example, and terracotta roof tiles are common around the Mediterranean. Architecture as a clue has many more.
Once these five checks become a habit, add smaller details, like the posts along the edge of the road. Bollards and road posts is a good next read.
How to get better
Learn one region at a time
Solo, Survival and private games can be limited to one region: Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East, Africa or Oceania. Sticking to one region for a week means you meet the same countries again and again, and the differences between them start to stand out. Europe makes a good first choice, because so many countries sit close together, many of them with their own language and road style.
Read the country guides
The country guides describe what to look for in each country. After a game, look up the places you missed. If you mixed up Portugal and Spain, read both guides side by side and note one difference you can check next time. One clear, reliable difference is worth more than ten vague impressions.
Learn the neighbours
Because a neighbouring country scores 2, knowing who borders whom is worth a lot. If you can tell you are somewhere German-speaking but can't decide between Germany and Austria, either answer earns points. The guides to telling neighbours apart in Europe, the Balkans and South America show how to split the trickiest pairs, so more of your 2s turn into 3s.
Try it: Play Survival with the region set to Europe. Before every guess, say out loud the driving side, the alphabet and the colour of the centre line. After a few games, notice how much those three checks narrow things down on their own.
XP, levels, Passport stamps and Miles
XP rewards every answer that scores: 10 XP for the right country, 6 for a 2-point answer and 3 for a 1-point answer. XP builds up into levels, and there is no top level, so you can keep climbing for as long as you play.
Your Passport collects a stamp for each country you name correctly in a Street View game. Stamps come in bronze, then silver, then gold, so there is still something to aim for after your first stamp. Games in Flags mode earn XP but don't add Passport stamps.
Miles are earned by reaching new levels, winning matches and inviting friends. You can spend them only on the look of your profile. They have no cash value.
Playing with friends
A private game lets you play with people you know. The host sets it up and shares a 6-letter code or an invite link. The host also chooses the mode, the length, the region and the version, and up to 30 players can join. That makes it easy to arrange, say, a short Urban game around Europe for a family evening, or a Natural game in Africa for friends who like landscapes.
Playing together is also a great way to learn. After each game, compare what everyone noticed: one person may have read the alphabet while another spotted the road lines. Chat is filtered, and players can be reported if anything goes wrong. Teachers can find ideas for class games in Geography games in the classroom.
Glossary of game terms
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Place | One location to identify. You look around, then type the country. |
| Back to start | The button that takes you back to where the place began. |
| Skip | Moves on to the next place. It counts as a wrong answer. |
| Neighbour | A country that shares a border with the answer. Worth 2 points. |
| Sub-region | One of the 24 parts the world is split into, such as the Caribbean. Any country in the same one scores 1 point. |
| Version | Normal, Urban or Natural: the kind of places you will see. |
| Region | A setting for Solo, Survival and private games that keeps every place in Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East, Africa or Oceania. |
| Streak | The number of days in a row you have finished the daily challenge. |
| XP and levels | Experience points from every answer that scores. They add up to levels, which never stop. |
| Passport | Your collection of country stamps: bronze, then silver, then gold. |
| Miles | Earned through play and spent on your profile's look. No cash value. |
| Game code | The six letters that let friends join a private game. |