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Show HN: Trailmarks – Huge, browser-based, Carmen Sandiego-style travel game

19 points by matsxmats 1y ago

I'd love to have people test-play my Carmen Sandiego/Backpacker style travel game. It's a retro genre... but if you like geography and quizzes, you'll like this! It's a working alpha with most of the content I intend to add, but I need to have people give it a try now before I decide which directions to fully develop! I'm torn between putting effort into missions, more advanced in-game trading economy or creating more of a narrative. But I'm also curious if you get the navigation, if the core gameplay makes sense and if you want to continue playing, basically. Hope you find it worth playing. It's a pure browser game with no login, you're playing for free immediately in this alpha! Please feel welcome to DM feedback or reply or anything!

ArthurGallery 1y ago
How did you create the questions? I get that they are AI generated but how do you avoid halluciniations? They seem solid enough.
- matsxmats 1y ago
  Thanks for asking! A few different things, and it's probably not perfect yet. But a few things: + I've worked on a quiz app for a year so I have a bit of a polished prompt + writing good example questions + letting the AI choose the quiz topics + double checking with a different LLM. So GPT 4.5 reviewed questions from Claude and so on. I think the percentage of hallucinations are at the same level as something written entirely by humans now.
CactusOnFire 1y ago
This is fun, though I will note that when traveling, my new location didn't factor in, and all my locations were based on my initial locale. Might be me being a firefox user. Edit, tried in Chrome - still didn't work.
- matsxmats 1y ago
  Oops, thanks for letting me know. Of course I had to introduce a bug when putting it live. It is fixed now, hope you'll enjoy a nice trail of pins across the planet ;)
wingerlang 1y ago
Nice, definitely gave backpacker vibes. Some issues: - It doesn't "feel" like a game, it felt a bit aimless. Maybe some missions like travel to X countries, do Y things, within Z starting budget. - The "X" at the top of the screen feels disjointed. - The popup covers the pin sometimes. - I wanted to click the departures to travel onwards. - Clicking the true/false feels odd, I was not sure whether I correctly guessed or not sometimes. Is this genre alive at all nowadays?
- matsxmats 1y ago
  Trying to make this genre come alive again with this! :) Your feedback is noted! I have a mission system (bottom right corner), and indeed one thing I'm wondering is if I need to deck it out and make more of a fuss about it. I think you're right - it will help in making it a game. Thanks a lot for bringing it up. And thanks for the UI feedback too!
  - wingerlang 1y ago
    I took the initial "type" to be more of a difficulty or question-types, not about missions. Even so, clicking the bottom I get this: > The mission of your game. Complete all your levels and achievements, and you can return to London a success. Can you go to London yet? Nope! Which is both confusing (I am in London) and aimless ("Do everything"). Definitely needs some more attention. I also wish I could click-and-drag the cards, or simply click to focus, keeps tripping me up.
    - matsxmats 1y ago
      Ok, great to know. The achievement logic is half-baked because I don't really know if people would care or not. The way I'm reading you it sounds like you, at least, would like to see it more fleshed out. Which is cool, I got a ton of ideas for it! Why would you like to click-and-drag and focus on the cards? Where would you drag them? This is interesting, I haven't thought about this at all.
      - 1y ago
elijahwright 1y ago
This actually amused me for a few minutes - I played Carmen Sandiego last in the very early 90s and I got a nice nostalgia hit from this. OIDC logins and a backend where you can store progress and achievements would be a nice addition. Heck, even storing the data in my local browser’s store would be okay. :-)
elijahwright 1y ago
(And now I’m off to search for Backpacker on board game geek…)

19 points by matsxmats 1y ago

ArthurGallery 1y ago

How did you create the questions? I get that they are AI generated but how do you avoid halluciniations? They seem solid enough.

matsxmats 1y ago
Thanks for asking! A few different things, and it's probably not perfect yet. But a few things: + I've worked on a quiz app for a year so I have a bit of a polished prompt + writing good example questions + letting the AI choose the quiz topics + double checking with a different LLM. So GPT 4.5 reviewed questions from Claude and so on. I think the percentage of hallucinations are at the same level as something written entirely by humans now.

CactusOnFire 1y ago

This is fun, though I will note that when traveling, my new location didn't factor in, and all my locations were based on my initial locale. Might be me being a firefox user. Edit, tried in Chrome - still didn't work.

matsxmats 1y ago
Oops, thanks for letting me know. Of course I had to introduce a bug when putting it live. It is fixed now, hope you'll enjoy a nice trail of pins across the planet ;)

wingerlang 1y ago

Nice, definitely gave backpacker vibes. Some issues: - It doesn't "feel" like a game, it felt a bit aimless. Maybe some missions like travel to X countries, do Y things, within Z starting budget. - The "X" at the top of the screen feels disjointed. - The popup covers the pin sometimes. - I wanted to click the departures to travel onwards. - Clicking the true/false feels odd, I was not sure whether I correctly guessed or not sometimes. Is this genre alive at all nowadays?

matsxmats 1y ago
Trying to make this genre come alive again with this! :) Your feedback is noted! I have a mission system (bottom right corner), and indeed one thing I'm wondering is if I need to deck it out and make more of a fuss about it. I think you're right - it will help in making it a game. Thanks a lot for bringing it up. And thanks for the UI feedback too!
- wingerlang 1y ago
  I took the initial "type" to be more of a difficulty or question-types, not about missions. Even so, clicking the bottom I get this: > The mission of your game. Complete all your levels and achievements, and you can return to London a success. Can you go to London yet? Nope! Which is both confusing (I am in London) and aimless ("Do everything"). Definitely needs some more attention. I also wish I could click-and-drag the cards, or simply click to focus, keeps tripping me up.
  - matsxmats 1y ago
    Ok, great to know. The achievement logic is half-baked because I don't really know if people would care or not. The way I'm reading you it sounds like you, at least, would like to see it more fleshed out. Which is cool, I got a ton of ideas for it! Why would you like to click-and-drag and focus on the cards? Where would you drag them? This is interesting, I haven't thought about this at all.
    - 1y ago

elijahwright 1y ago

This actually amused me for a few minutes - I played Carmen Sandiego last in the very early 90s and I got a nice nostalgia hit from this. OIDC logins and a backend where you can store progress and achievements would be a nice addition. Heck, even storing the data in my local browser’s store would be okay. :-)

elijahwright 1y ago

(And now I’m off to search for Backpacker on board game geek…)