Show HN: Time Portal – Get dropped into history, guess where you landed
226 comments
·March 12, 2025baud147258
Personnaly I didn't felt as if I was trying to recognize a place and period in history, but trying to guess what prompts were used to generate the pictures. Or at least for some of the pictures where I wasn't as sure of the event (like seeing the rose on a picture for the war of the roses).
Also I didn't listen to many of the sounds, but I got English voices for something happening in France (the Fauvisme guess).
But still I had some fun and it's nice to see a good use for AI
rob74
Yeah, it's probably a good strategy to ignore the (unfortunately mostly incorrect) details and rather try to get a general feeling of what the videos are trying to tell you. For example the "shipyard" page - I was first completely puzzled by the very American-looking workers, but then I thought about what important historic event happened in a shipyard, and together with the red-and-white flags (although the most prominent one seems to be Austrian, which is misleading) I arrived at the correct answer...
However, I also have a "complaint": the "balloon" page (trying to avoid spoiling it) has three videos in a big city and one in the countryside, yet the correct location is the countryside location, not the city (although the city is even mentioned by name in one of the prompts!). So a little more care here is probably warranted...
Aaaand the "pope" page has (according to the prompts) three scenes set at the Vatican, but the location seems to be somewhere else in Rome :)
samplank2
Yeah, fair enough. Glad you had fun!
lelandfe
> The videos aren’t always historically accurate to the last detail
Are they ever?
> They might incorporate elements of folklore or have details from popular beliefs about the way things looked rather than the latest academic research on how they looked
Like the one of the age of castles man loading an American civil war cannon by holding another cannon up to it: https://www.eggnog.ai/timeportal/37e02fea-bbb2-4b88-ae8c-0a3...
I must have missed that folklore.
hot_gril
Still more accurate most of the time than a lot of historical video games at least.
I got a trippy one that was supposed to be about Da Vinci painting the Last Supper, but the people were moving, so I thought it was supposed to be the actual supper: https://www.eggnog.ai/timeportal/56571c14-8f13-48ba-b60f-d82...
slg
>Still more accurate most of the time than a lot of historical video games at least.
This game is much closer to Trivial Pursuit than it is Assassin's Creed. The importance of accuracy depends on the type of game and when the point of the game is specifically testing the player's knowledge, a lack of accuracy is game-breaking.
Cthulhu_
And where the creators are on the spectrum between historical accuracy vs politics vs target audience; Asscreed is one that tries to balance it, sometimes it works, their most recent example has had major criticisms. Kingdom Come focuses on historical accuracy but since they found no records of e.g. Black people in medieval Bohemia they didn't include them in the first game, which did trigger some criticism - the game director being outspoken on the issue probably didn't help.
tdb7893
The inaccuracy was disappointing to me. If the point is historical trivia it's hard when the historical trivia isn't right. I have done some fencing and I noticed it especially for weapons and armor (though that might be just because that's what I know at least a tiny bit about).
Overall it's a fun idea though. I was able to consistently get pretty close in time and location so even with the anachronisms there was enough there.
dkarl
It's a really fun idea and a terrible example of applying AI to a problem. An average person with an internet connection is going to do a terrible job of getting historical details right, and the only thing AI is doing better here is generating artistic depictions of the mistakes faster than a human could.
This is an example of something that looks like an educational game but has the opposite effect. I had fun doing my round, but I won't do it again, because I think I will learn more wrong things from it than right things.
rob74
It's also a bit disappointing how much AI still deviates from what you ask of it. In one case, the prompt is (with spoilers removed):
> This star-lit scene in a [...] garden showcases [...] using a seven-foot reflecting telescope, with speculum metal mirrors, in 18th-century [...]. The [...] row house architecture, oil lantern lighting, and his period attire all pinpoint the late 1700s. The meticulously ground mirror indicates the telescope’s custom design that enabled this revolutionary astronomical finding.
The result is a picture (with some panning animation) of a guy who for some reason has a pistol in his belt, looking through a complicated-looking telescope that is however definitely not a seven-foot mirror telescope in broad daylight with an oil painting inexplicably hanging in mid air behind him. No starlight, row houses or oil lanterns to be seen.
blkhawk
I think AI could actually makes it fairer for the average player because it "smears" the time a bit to a general "vibe".
That said I too was a bit annoyed by how it rendered the byzantine empire. I thought Carthage was meant. So i was over by a thousand years.
valiant55
I had cranes constructing the library at Alexandria.
petepete
It's like lighting one cigarette with another.
cdjk
This is awesome. I had the same feeling I had when I first played GeoGuessr. It's one of the first times I've seen what is obviously AI-generated video used in a super compelling way. I want to keep playing.
A few super nitpicky comments:
- I dropped my pin for "Seward's Folly" on Alaska. The videos were clear enough that I knew that's what it was, which made me excited. But then it said it happened in Washington, DC.
- It might be sample bias, but I've only gotten events after year 0 (and technically, it went from 1 BCE/BC to 1 CE/AD.
I'd love to play with this my seven year old, but some of the images are too violent. A "PG mode" would be awesome.
reaperman
The Seward's Folly had an additional issue besides the fact that some of the locations were in DC and others were in Alaska:
The video of the signing in the White House shows Rutherford B. Hayes, not Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson was president in 1867, not Rutherford B. Hayes.
Your location estimate was off because you matched the 3-out-of-4 of videos showing Alaska / Russian Army / Tligits.
My time estimate was off because I matched the only video from the White House ...which was showing Rutherford B. Hayes in office.
maratc
The internal struggle of this project is that it's most likely to attract people interested in history, and these are exactly the people who are most likely to spot inconsistencies and dislike the experience.
Having said that, it's a first occurrence when I see AI-generated videos that provide something of a value.
samplank2
Thanks for the kind words and for the feedback! Good call about PG mode. We also want this to be usable in classrooms so that would definitely help.
vunderba
Very polished UI/UX. I'd say this is far closer in similarity to TimeGuessr than GeoGuessr. The only difference is that in TimeGuessr you are guessing a year and a location based on a single real image whereas Time Portal is making heavy use of GenAI for image/videos. Anything I'm missing?
OP: You might also want to change the title in your HTML header for the game - it just says Eggnog which is kinda funny but not sure if that was intentional.
CWhiting
When project codenames bleed into production go-live.
Project "Eggnog" FTW!
samplank2
Yes! Similar vibe to TimeGuessr. And thanks for the heads up about the HTML header.
polishdude20
Interesting that the AI makes many of the outdoor structures look ancient rather than how they'd look in the time period. People walking over crumbling ancient roads whole fallen ruins loom over them isn't exactly accurate.
samplank2
Definitely some issues to be improved in the game, but I think these sorts of errors can be driven down.
keyle
This is cool, but I'm not sure some of the hints are not more red herrings than anything else. Because AI sort of blends things, the prompt needs to be spot on or, for example, India starts looking like any part of the middle east. Traditional China looks like Japan, etc.
Also some of the temporal clues were very good, some were 'wtf'.
I also laughed at some of the hallucination I witnessed. Like a group of people staring in a telescope pointing straight at a white wall.
Fun though, just needs to be honed in a little.
It would help to have markers on the timeline for the different ages, at least for the first round! e.g. Bronze age.
You already sort of do, being a Gregorian timeline and marking 0 AD as Christ's birth. That's a dead giveaway when you see crosses. So I think it would be fair and useful to give a range of eras as markers on the timeline.
The map could also be continental, and the locations more precise than the country.
The map could be more exciting, and change based on the timeline selection! It's currently showing the "current" map and not the map of the era; which in some respect is relevant.
Finally, the scoring could be more explanatory, you got 5,000 / 10,000 for the following reason / calculation method. Maybe a graph of points per time correction and location. It could also be more comprehensive scoring, with a slight multiplier for streaks, a badge for being good at temporal location vs. geolocation etc.
Scoring could animate up, to gamify the experience, create a sort of level end screen that builds up excitement. The map could animate and so could the timeline in this end phase.
I like the idea, there is a lot you could do to push this further.
samplank2
Thanks for the feedback and the ideas! Is your idea about showing the ages just to make it a bit easier if you don't know exactly when different ages started and ended?
keyle
Yeah slightly easier and also educative if you think about it.
It also dresses up the timeline so that the game gets its own identity.
stingrae
My first reaction is that the scoring is too harsh. I got within 50 years and 100 km and the resulting score is 7,406 / 10,000.
maratc
I got within 15 years and 200 km but got 7,275 / 10,000. If the expectation is to absolutely nail it, I can hardly imagine who is it for.
samplank2
My hope is that one day there is a Rainbolt for Time Portal. For someone like that to exist, the game has to be hard. That said, I agree the scoring could definitely use some improvement!
maratc
I've put the part about Pope Gregory (and St Paul Basilica) at the St Paul basilica in Vatican. Was punished by not putting it in Rome (where by "Rome" the game probably meant "whatever the meaning is in the underlying map engine").
The Alaska sale is in DC? One of the videos has the exchange of the flags on the post.
samplank2
Yeah the scoring can be pretty harsh. You should be able to see your percentile overall and for each round on the results page.
kdamica
Cool idea but the AI images are kind of lame. For anyone who wants something like this I recommend NYT's Flashback quiz: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/upshot/flashb...
Kiro
I think the AI images are what makes this interesting. First good use of AI video I've seen.
SamPatt
Or an open source version you can play infinitely:
CWhiting
This one is fun, I managed to get 6 out of 8, which I think is pretty good for me, considering I don't know much history.
tanepiper
Videos had Japanese men, but the event was in China - Video generator must have just went with "generic asian warrior"
nobodyandproud
They also had Western-style shoes, so it made me think of post-Meiji, Imperial Japan.
I was only off by 600 years.
I still enjoyed it, however.
johnisgood
I just had the same experience!
kypro
I really liked it but felt some of the image hints were a bit ambiguous at times which annoyed me.
I had one for the US purchase of Alaska which I got from the images of Americans building log cabins in an icy landscape and another image showing an American signing a document. I assumed it would be either Washington or Alaska (Anchorage I guess), but wasn't sure which because it depends on if you weight the signing of the agreement over the building of US settlements. It could have been either given the images were of different locations.
Similarly I had picture of British dude creating telescopes and realised it was very likely Herschel. But I also knew Herschels early work was done in Bath, while his most famous telescope was built later in Slough. Again, it wasn't entirely clear which location it would have been referring to.
Maybe I'm just being stupid though. I think you could have argued that right answers in both cases were more likely to be Washington and Bath.
That said, I really really liked it and think you have something here. Personally I'd play this over Geoguessr any day and I'll show my GF it tomorrow because I think she'll also like the history aspect of it.
Also, might worth lowering the distance penalty if someone guesses the right country, but the wrong point? Events in large countries are more risky just because of their size. Eg, if an event happened in France but you click Germany you'll often get less of a distance penalty than correctly guessing an event happened in the US but clicking the wrong part of the US.
samplank2
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for the kind words! Yeah the situations you pointed out like Washington/Alaska where it's not being consistent in the depiction of a location aren't great and will be improved. I'm kind of torn about what to do on the distance scoring. On the one hand, I see your point that knowing the country should count for something, but it currently doesn't count for much if the country is big and you get the wrong side of the country. On the other hand, doing that would make the scoring system more complicated, and it's already not particularly easy to understand.
bucketsofthundr
Love the game but I second improving the scoring mechanics.
I was 40 years off and less than 5km from the place and "only" got 7829. Assuming 99% accuracy for location, and based on some back-of-the-napkin math, that means you have to be within 70.7 years of the actual event to register any points for guessing the correct time. I think If you're within 100 years of the event you should get points. I think ideally it should be a curve, but if you can't program a curve then perhaps create brackets, like -10 points for each year within 10 years, -25 points for each year between 10 and 25 years, and -50 points for each year past that. Using this method you can be +/- 115 years of an event before getting 0 points for the time portion, and the closer you are, the closer to 5000 points you achieve.
Also, the one event was credited as being in Rome, although the picture shows, and the description says, St. Peter's Basilica, which is in Vatican City.
samplank2
Glad you liked it, thanks for playing!
Fair point on the scoring, seems like a lot of people feel that way. Right now, half your points come from distance in km, and half come from distance in years. So you probably got 5000 points for location, and lost points on the year. But it's probably a bit too harsh right now.
And thanks for pointing out the Vatican City nit.
AlessandroF6587
What about going logarithmic with time? The more it's in the past the more errors are forgiven. Explained in another way use the relative time difference (diff/(now-value)) to compute the score and not the absolute time difference
samplank2
Good suggestion
mywittyname
Location accuracy probably should be sinusoidal where the score is not really effected if the pointer is within ~10-20km of the event.
For dates, I think it needs to take into account how far back something occurred, with recent history being +/-5 years, early modern being +/- 50 years, and ancient history being +/-500 years. That's closer to the resolution we think of events in (decades, centuries, millennia). You could probably even update the UI to have these graduations.
skort
Interesting concept, but the use of AI art is personally extremely off-putting.
Maybe it works for people who like having everything filtered through a modern cinematic cgi filter. In this case, sure, it is a neat tool for seeing how a hollywood studio might have imagined events of the past to look like. At least you admit upfront here that they are "fantastical imaginations" of historical events, but maybe you should clarify that on the website too.
I've always found it better to hear from actual historians, or better yet, dive into the source material when learning about events of the past. This takes some actual work and requires doing good research. It would be nice if AI could help those folks do their jobs more easily instead of being used to generate more fake looking slop.
Kiro
I don't think this would be interesting without the AI art so big disagree. First good use of AI video I've seen.
samplank2
I understand if you don't like AI art. If Time Portal inspires anyone to learn more about history, I will be happy.
serp002
Of course its better to hear from actual historians/look into it yourself, but this is a super cool way to at least learn a little bit about history while also being a fun game.
If people dont want to spend time deep-diving history but are still interested I think this is an absolutely awesome way to start/learn. I would just suggest adding more ways to learn about the event itself with links to source material/wikipedia etc.
doublejallday
[flagged]
Hi HN! I love imagining the past, so I made Time Portal, a game where you are dropped into a historical event and see AI video footage from that moment. You have to guess where you are in time and on the map. It’s like GeoGuessr (and heavily inspired by it!) but for historical events.
The videos are all created with AI. It’s a pipeline of Flux (images), Kling (video), and mmaudio (audio). The videos aren’t always historically accurate to the last detail. They might incorporate elements of folklore or have details from popular beliefs about the way things looked rather than the latest academic research on how they looked.
I’m thinking a lot about how to make the game more interactive. One thing that makes Geoguessr so fun for me is that you can move infinitely and always find more details to help you pinpoint the location. I want Time Portal to have a similar quality. I have a few ideas to try soon that will hopefully make the game more interactive and infinite.