Spotted
A wildlife photograph on screen — name the animal
Category: Picture · Players: free-for-all · Status: Sim only
A photograph of an animal fills the stage and chat names it. Common name, regional name or the Latin binomial — the aliases come off Wikidata, so “grizzly bear”, “brown bear” and “Ursus arctos” all land on the same bear.
Pick a habitat and the session has a place: the savanna is a safari, the rainforest is a jungle trek, the temperate forest is a walk in the woods, and water is reef, coast and open ocean. The stage takes its typeface, colour and light from whichever one is on screen.
Gameplay
One animal, full frame, shot through a viewfinder. The photographer’s credit and the licence sit on screen the whole time the photo does — that is a condition of using the picture, not a footnote.
Type the animal. Near-misses and typos are forgiven, and any of the species’ recorded names count — you do not have to guess which one the bank stores.
On the default scoring the round stays open and everyone who is right scores, with the three quickest paid most. Set it to first-to-claim and the first correct answer ends the round instead.
The name, the photographer and a link to the file on Wikimedia Commons. The link waits until here on purpose: a Commons URL spells the species out.
Host options
- Habitat — savanna, rainforest, temperate forest, water, or mixed for the whole bank. Each one is shown with how many animals it holds.
- Animals — how many photographs the session plays.
- Scoring — fastest-worth-more (the default) or first-to-claim.
- Seconds per round — auto-reveal on a timer, or leave it blank and reveal by hand.
- Gift hint — one gift that uncovers letters of the animal’s name.
Sources
Every photograph is a freely licensed image from Wikimedia Commons, and the species’ names and aliases come from Wikidata. Commons images are licensed file by file rather than under one blanket licence, so the bank only accepts public-domain and CC licences and drops any row that has lost its photographer. The credit is on screen for as long as the picture is.