How to play Contour
Contour drops you somewhere on a small island. Your job is to work out exactly where you’re standing, using only the view around you and a contour map.
1. Look around
You see the island through your explorer’s eyes. Drag the view (or use the arrow keys) to turn your head and look in every direction. Look for the big shapes first: the highest hill, where the land drops to the sea, valleys running down to the coast, and any flat ground. On Easy and Medium you’ll also see landmarks: churches, castles and woods.
2. Read the map
The map beside the view shows the whole island from above, drawn like an Ordnance Survey map. Each orange contour line joins points of the same height, every 10 metres, with a bolder line every 50 metres. Where the lines bunch up, the ground is steep; where they spread out, it’s gentle. Black dots with numbers are spot heights, usually on summits. If you’re new to this, our guide to reading contour lines explains it step by step.
3. Mark your spot
Tap the map where you think you’re standing, then Lock in your guess. You can zoom the map with a pinch, the mouse wheel or the + and − buttons, and drag your marker to adjust it. Once you lock in, the camera swings out so you can see yourself on the island, with a flag where you guessed.
Scoring
Each game has three rounds, and each round is worth up to 100 points, so the best possible score is 300. A guess within 25 metres scores the full 100; after that, points fall away gradually with distance.
| Result | Distance | Points (roughly) |
|---|---|---|
| 🎯 Spot on | under 100 m | 90 to 100 |
| 🟢 Sharp map reading | under 300 m | 60 to 90 |
| 🟡 Close | under 700 m | 30 to 60 |
| 🟠 Right area, wrong hill | under 1.4 km | 10 to 30 |
| 🔴 Lost in the hills | further | under 10 |
Difficulty
- Easy: a compass strip along the top of the view, plus landmarks on the map and in the view.
- Medium: landmarks, but no compass.
- Hard: no compass and no landmarks, just the shape of the land and the contours.
On every level you can look all the way round.
Game modes
- Daily challenge: the same three islands for everyone, each day, on each difficulty. You get one go, and your score goes on that day’s leaderboard. If you close the game mid-way, you’ll pick up from the round you were on.
- Practice: three random islands, as often as you like.
- Seeded: type any word or number to get a fixed set of islands. Share the seed and friends can play exactly the same ones.
Tips
- Find the sea first. Knowing which sides of you are coast narrows things down quickly.
- Use the highest point. Find the tallest hill in view, then find the biggest summit on the map, and work out which way you must be facing.
- Are you high or low? If you can see over most of the island, you’re on high ground. If hills surround you, you’re in a valley.
- Check the slope at your feet. Look down: if the ground falls steeply one way, look for tightly packed contours on the map.
- Landmarks are your friends. On Easy and Medium, a castle on a hilltop or a church by the coast can pin you down almost exactly. See what the map symbols mean.