Month: November 2023

I’ve mentioned the game Globle before – a sort of Wordle offshoot centered around geography. I recently discovered that the same group behind Globle, Trainwreck Labs, also had an animal game! That game is Metazooa.

My favorite part of Metazooa is that each wrong answer gives you the common order, class, etc. that your answer and the correct one share, so each guess fills out a sort of family tree. From a game perspective, it’s useful to extrapolate what this isn’t more closely related to; from an aesthetic perspective, it looks cool; and from a life perspective, I’m garnering a much more detailed understanding of the animal kingdom than I knew before.

And the same is true for plants! Metazooa has a sibling game, called Metaflora, which is similarly fascinating. As it’s harder (for people who don’t study plants), Metaflora gives you 25 guesses, while Metazooa gives you 20. In both games, you can trade three guesses for a hint: the next taxonomic rank down. They also have practice games if the one plant/animal daily isn’t enough for you!

I’m clearly fond of both of these; if you love these branches of science, or just want to understand them better, then this is probably the fun, educational game for you.