live · 2026
Findin
A browser game where players read evidence about an animal, infer where it lived, then place it in Earth history. Extinct animals can use cached paleogeographic coastlines and reconstructed fossil points instead of pretending ancient life belongs on today's continents.
live at findin.world; the older documented Railway URL was retired and now 404s
What it does
Next.js routes serve a Supabase-backed, server-authoritative Daily game and an unranked Practice mode. Daily puzzle rows persist a frozen animal snapshot, then replay stored WHERE and WHEN guesses through the same pure scoring engine used locally. Offline scripts discover, enrich, rescue, validate, and import content; GPlates work is cached ahead of gameplay and read through fallback-safe API routes.
Why I built it
Regular geography games stop at the present. I wanted a version where 'where' also means 'when' — where paleogeography, deep time, and species-occurrence evidence turn a guessing game into something that teaches you the planet has looked very different before.
Technical problem
The hard part is data reliability, not the map. Findin separates provider ingestion from gameplay, normalizes GBIF/PBDB/Wikipedia/Wikidata/GPlates-derived evidence into curated animal records, then gates Daily and Practice eligibility on taxonomy, geography, time, paleo, media, and Field Notes quality so weak content cannot quietly become a puzzle.
My contribution
Builder of the game, content pipeline, Supabase schema, daily planner, paleo-cache path, and quality gates. Ownership details beyond the local git history still need human confirmation before publishing stronger wording.
Evidence and limitations
Re-verified 2026-09-16 against the local Findin checkout: package.json, Supabase migrations 0001-0015, serverGameEngine, daily rotation code, content readiness gates, GPlates cache routes, content scripts, tests, recent git history, and locally rendered /daily. The Railway URL listed in older progress docs returned HTTP 404, but `railway status` showed the actual service Online at findin.world, and /, /daily, /practice, and /leaderboard all returned 200 there on 2026-09-16 (a live render of /daily showed the same Daily Creature #259 as the local screenshot). The repo remote exists at github.com/mukndd/findin, but the profile does not assume public visibility.
Technologies
Next.js, TypeScript, Supabase, PostHog, GPlates-derived paleogeography, GBIF, Paleobiology Database, Vitest
343 visitors — as of 2026-10-08. humans only; cumulative tracked usage since 2026-08-25, bots and owner's test accounts excluded. PostHog snapshot, as of 2026-10-08. Source: https://github.com/mukndd/mukndd/blob/master/stats/data.json
191 players — as of 2026-10-08. started a puzzle; cumulative tracked usage since 2026-08-25, bots and owner's test accounts excluded. PostHog snapshot, as of 2026-10-08. Source: https://github.com/mukndd/mukndd/blob/master/stats/data.json
28 countries — as of 2026-10-08. visitor locations; cumulative tracked usage since 2026-08-25, bots and owner's test accounts excluded. PostHog snapshot, as of 2026-10-08. Source: https://github.com/mukndd/mukndd/blob/master/stats/data.json
60 species reviewed and verified for launch — as of 2026-09-15. Reviewed against the Research Queue content-tracking sheet, not auto-generated — each entry passed a manual verification step before being included. Source: Findin repository — scripts/content/manifests/launch-60.json (count: 60, criteria: researchStatus RESEARCHED + reviewStatus VERIFIED)
