⚔ GeoGuardians

A TCG that lets you discover the world. Capture, duel, conquer — a blend of geographical treasure hunts and strategic card battles, with real cultural depth.

🎮 ▶ Play now in your browser

🇫🇷 Vous parlez français ? Le jeu est entièrement traduit. → Jouer en français

🌍 The concept

GeoGuardians was born from a stubborn challenge: can a solo dev build a Pokémon GO-style world game without a AAA studio's tech stack? Just a world map, a good idea, and a lot of coffee?

Turns out — yes. The result mixes three things I love:

• A TCG — collect cards, build your deck, challenge other players in real-time strategic duels
• A cultural Geoguessr — every "spawn" is a real place on Earth, hidden behind clues you have to decode on the world map
• A gamified Wikipedia — every unlocked location reveals its history, geography, and culture. You play, you travel, you actually learn something

"My dream isn't millions of players. It's a hundred passionate ones."

🎮 Game modes

🗺️ Geo-Hunt — Geographic puzzles

Find mystery locations on the world map using clues, photos, and a hot/cold distance system.

Progressive riddles with reveal-on-distance hints
3 / 6 / 9 places
3 attempts per location, cumulative distance, bronze/silver/gold/diamond tiers
3 / 6 / 9 places
One photo, find the location
1 / 3 / 6 places
Special admin event, one brutal location, 3 attempts
Limited time
Live lobbies, 2-8 players, best-of-N rounds
Riddle + clue revealed instantly, 30s per location

Rewards scale with session length — longer hunts = better boosters.

🌐 Multiplayer Defies — Real-time lobbies

Create a public or private lobby, up to 8 players. Everyone gets the same riddle, drops their pin on the map, and the closest guess wins the round. First to win the most rounds takes the match.

• Public rooms — visible in the lobby browser, drop in anytime
• Private rooms — share a 6-character code with friends
• Configurable — 2-8 players, 30/50/90s rounds, best of 3/5/7/10
• Realtime reveal — see everyone's pins at the end of each round
• Anti-cheat — distances recalculated server-side, positions hidden during the round
• Auto-skip — no waiting for the timer if everyone has submitted
• Host transfer — if the creator leaves, the next-oldest player takes over

⚔ PvP — Card duels

Pick your elemental guardian, build a 12-card deck, and battle in real time.

💧 Water
Healing, control, lifesteal
🔥 Fire
Burst, burn, aggression
🪨 Stone
Tank, riposte, blocking

Classic elemental triangle: Water > Fire > Stone > Water. Each turn you pick your card simultaneously with your opponent — strategy, anticipation, bluffing, all under 100ms latency.

3 variants per guardian: Standard → Gold → Ultimate. Evolve your guardian to its final form.

🤖 Simulator — Practice mode

Don't want to wait for an opponent? Train against a 3-difficulty AI to sharpen your deck before jumping into PvP.

📋 Quests & Missions

Daily and weekly missions reward you for exploring all modes — capture, duel, hunt. Notification banner on the portal when rewards are ready.

🏆 Seasons

Seasonal leaderboards with exclusive top-10 rewards. Browse archives of past seasons. Gold/silver/bronze medals on your profile.

✨ What makes this game different

• 100% free, no pay-to-win. No monetization, no paid boosters, no €9.99 cosmetics. None planned.
• Mobile-first, desktop-friendly. Installable as a PWA, dedicated PC layout (map left, info sidebar right).
• Solo dev, fully transparent. Every card, every location, every mechanic designed personally.
• Real cultural depth. You finish each session having learned something about the actual world.
• No ads, no abusive tracking. Just the game.
• Bilingual FR + EN (combat log engine still FR-only, EN translations rolling out)

📊 Current state — Early Access

🃏 Cards
33+ across Water / Fire / Stone + universal
👹 Guardians
3 guardians × 3 variants (Standard / Gold / Ultimate)
🌍 Locations
75+ real-world places to discover
🎯 Missions
~10 dynamic daily/weekly
⚔ PvP
Ranked + casual matchmaking
🌐 Multi Geo
2-8 players, public + private rooms
🔐 Auth
Email · Twitch · Discord · Google
🌍 Languages
FR ✅ · EN ✅

The game updates several times a week. Bugs reported via the in-game Feedback button get fixed in hours, not months.

💻 Download (early access)

Browser-first, but desktop and mobile launchers are rolling out.

✅ Install via your browser's "Add to Home Screen"
✅ install Windows (Tauri-based, ~10 MB)
✅ install Apple Silicon + Intel)
⏳ Planned (Play Store + direct APK)

Important: GeoGuardians requires an internet connection. The desktop and mobile launchers are thin wrappers around the web app — same updates, same servers, same realtime PvP. They include a dedicated offline mode with mini-games (Geo Quiz, Flag Guesser) when you lose connection.

🛠️ Under the hood

For the curious:

Frontend
Vanilla HTML/JS, mobile-first, PWA, ~22 pages
Backend
Supabase (PostgreSQL, RLS, Realtime, Auth)
Hosting
Vercel
Maps
OpenFreeMap (vector tiles) + Esri (satellite)
Auth
Email + OAuth (Twitch, Discord, Google)
PvP latency
< 100 ms via Supabase Realtime
Multi Geo
Realtime channels + SECURITY DEFINER RPCs
Desktop launcher
Tauri (Rust + WebView, ~10 MB)
Android launcher
Bubblewrap TWA (planned)

No heavy frameworks. Hand-crafted HTML/JS, idiomatic SQL, with serious attention to mobile constraints.

🚀 Roadmap

✅ Recently shipped

• Multiplayer Defies (full sprint: realtime lobbies, anti-cheat, host transfer, PC layout)
• Seasons system (rotating leaderboards + archives)
• Discord + Google OAuth
• Sprint 3/6/9 configurable across all modes
• Feature flags system (Speedrun in admin canary)
• Full FR + EN i18n (except combat engine, in progress)
• Offline mode with mini-games (Quiz Geo + Flag Guesser)

🟡 In progress

• EN translation of remaining Multi Defies keys
• Public Speedrun rollout (with leaderboard + Speed Demon achievement)
• Desktop launchers (Windows ✅ done, Mac ✅ done, Linux soon)

⏳ Short term

• Push notifications (Web Push PWA)
• Android APK (Play Store + direct download)
• More cards, more locations (target: 100+ locations by end of year)
• Multi Defies polish (reveal animations, refresh-resume)

🌑 Medium / long term

• Limited-time events (Halloween, Christmas...)
• Last Guardian — elimination variant of Multi Defies
• Live spectator mode (PvP + Multi Geo)
• Narrative quests linked to cultural sites

🙏 For early adopters

If you play now, you're shaping the game. Direct feedback through the in-game Feedback button reaches me personally. Critical bugs get patched in hours, not months. Suggestions get genuinely considered.

This is a passion project. I'm not chasing a unicorn exit. I want a small community of curious people who like maps, cards, and learning weird stuff about the world.

If that sounds like you — welcome aboard. ☕

📧 Contact

• 📧 Email: contact@0n3up.com
• 🌐 Website: geoguardians.0n3up.com
• 📖 Rules: Full rulebook

📜 Credits

• Game design + dev: 0n3Up
• Cultural sheets: inspired by Wikipedia (with attribution)
• Map tiles: OpenFreeMap
• Satellite imagery: Esri
• Early testers: the small crew who keep the game honest
• OAuth logos: official Twitch / Discord / Google brands

Made with ☕ and stubbornness by 0n3Up · 2026