Bearing — the daily navigation gauntlet
How good is your sense of direction? Bearing is a free browser navigation game: five quick rounds, the same for everyone each day, each one a journey you watch and a question the journey never answered out loud — where did it start, which way is home, where are you now. You commit your call first, then the true path draws itself back so you see exactly how right you were. Nothing to memorize: the answer isn't sitting on the screen to remember, you have to feel where you are. No signup — a full daily takes about two minutes.
The five rounds
| HOME | A walker sets out from a flagged start and wanders a few legs — the flag fades, the breadcrumb trail dissolves behind the dot. When the walker stops, tap where the journey started. Close counts: partial credit scales with your miss, and the tolerance is paced for dead reckoning, not pixel hunting. |
| FACE | Same kind of wander, different question: a compass ring appears around the stopped walker — tap the ring where home lies. Pure direction, no distance. The classic trap is pointing straight back along the last leg, as if the earlier turns never happened. |
| RIDE | The journey plays in first person: you're pinned to the walker, the world turns under you, landmarks drift past. Then a north-up map appears with the start flagged — tap where you ended up. Turning the ride back into map coordinates is the hardest transform in the game; mirror answers (left and right swapped) are the famous mistake. Because it's the hardest round, RIDE is scored on a wider tolerance than the others — an honest near-miss still earns real credit. One more trap worth naming: the landmarks are scenery, not the answer — placing yourself on a landmark you remember passing is the most common wrong tap, and the game will gently say so before you lock it in. |
| SPAN | The walker takes two legs of a detour. A ray points from the walker straight toward home — tap along it at the straight-line distance back. Direction is given, distance is the question: the trap is answering with the distance you walked instead of the shortcut. |
| TRACK | The walker stops at a fork with two marked paths home. Call which path is shorter — this is the one timed round, a quick confident read scores higher. After you lock, the walker runs the true faster path so you can check it. |
Scoring
Every round scores your sense of direction from 0 to 100 — full marks for dead-on, partial credit for close. Your daily result is the average of the five rounds, plus a five-square trail (🟩 homed in · 🟨 close · 🟥 lost) you can copy and send as a challenge — the link carries your score, so a friend who opens it is dared to out-navigate you. Come back tomorrow for a fresh gauntlet and build a daily streak — beat yesterday's score to sharpen it, and if you miss a day your personal best is saved and waiting. The menu shows your last seven days as a chain of squares — each finished gauntlet fills one, and today's pulses until you play. After you finish, the results screen shows today's rivals — how many players ran the gauntlet in the last 24 hours, the best score among them, and where yours ranks. Rivals are always anonymous: a count and a score, never names or accounts.
Controls
| Watch | Each round opens with a short journey — a few seconds, and it is the puzzle. Watch where the dot goes; nothing needs tapping until it stops. |
| Adjust | Tap or drag (mouse or finger) — tap the field or the map to place your marker, the ring to set an angle, the ray to set a distance; tap a path button on the fork round. Desktop: arrow keys fine-tune. |
| Answer | The LOCK IN button commits your call — only TRACK is on the clock, every other round lets you take your time. |
Modes
Daily gauntlet: 5 seeded journeys — walks, rides and forks identical for every player worldwide that day. One attempt each. Mid-gauntlet progress is saved if you get interrupted. The very first time the fork fools you, you get one more look at a fresh fork — after that they all count.
Practice — the navigation trainer: endless rounds, your way. Pick all five mixed or drill a single skill — home, face, ride, span or track. Every drill climbs a 12-level difficulty ladder: score green and the next journey gets harder — more legs, tighter tolerances — score red and it steps back down. Your current and best level per skill live in the picker: how high can you climb? Bearing also keeps a lifetime accuracy average per skill (from both daily and practice rounds, stored only in your browser), so the picker doubles as your navigation profile: it shows your average and level for each skill and flags your weakest round from today's gauntlet. Every round you finish — daily or practice — also earns XP equal to its score: climb a 12-rank ladder from adrift through pathfinder and dead reckoner up to true north. Your rank only ever goes up, and it lives in your browser — no account needed.
Tips
- Home: don't just chase the dot with your eyes — keep a thumb-feel of the start tugging at you as each turn swings it around.
- Face: people underestimate turns — if the walk turned hard, home is usually further around the ring than your gut says.
- Ride: on the map, first work out your last heading as a map direction — most wrong answers are the mirror image, so check which way your turns really went.
- Span: the shortcut is always shorter than the walk — if your mark sits at the distance you traveled, you've added the legs instead of cutting the corner.
- Track: don't trace every step — compare the big detours. The path that swings wider almost always loses.
Bearing is a game, not a geometry exam — it measures the dead-reckoning sense everyone builds by walking, driving and finding the way back, and every round shows you the truth after you call it.
FAQ
Is it free? Do I need an account? Free, no account, no install needed. It runs in any modern browser, on phones and school Chromebooks alike. If you'd like the daily one tap away, you can add Bearing to your home screen from your browser's menu. No download, no store, it's the same game in an app-shaped wrapper.
Is it the same puzzle for everyone? Yes — the daily gauntlet is seeded by the date, so your 73 and your friend's 88 came from identical journeys and forks.
Is this a memory game? No — nothing static sits on screen to memorize. The start flag fades before the journey is half done; the answer has to be carried in your head as the path unfolds, the way you keep track of the way back in a new neighborhood.
Does it work in my language? Practically yes — the rounds are dots, flags and compass rings, not words.
Who made this? Bearing is an original game by Yuki Andersen. More free games: Gauge, Glimpse, Tempo, Prism, Keel, Scout, Weft, Helm, Sling, Wordpull, Floe, Ballast, Well Duel, Well Putt, Wellspring.
