Noriento
Train your sense of direction.
Noriento is a free daily game that trains your sense of direction. Once a day you point your phone toward where you think true north is, tap to lock, and see how many degrees off you were. No hints, no map — just you and the world. One guess a day, and the error gets smaller over time.
How a round works
- Stand anywhere and decide which way true north is.
- Point the top of your phone that way and hold it flat.
- Tap once to lock. That is your one attempt for the day.
- Read your signed error — for example, “12° east of north”.
That number is the training signal. “34° off, to the west” sticks in memory in a way “roughly wrong” never does, and tomorrow’s guess starts from that memory.
Six games
Every game is the same shape — aim at something you cannot see, get scored in degrees. North and Cardinals are free forever, and one of the other four is free to everyone each day on rotation.
- North — the daily guess at true north. Free.
- Cardinals — east, south or west, one per day. Free.
- Places — which way is Tokyo from where you stand?
- Moon — point at the moon with your eyes closed.
- Sun — find the sun at night, through the earth.
- Planets — Venus, Jupiter, Saturn or Mars, a new one each day.
Questions
What is Noriento?
Noriento is a free daily micro-game that trains your sense of direction. Once a day, you point your phone toward where you think true north is, tap to lock your guess, and see your error in degrees. No hints, no maps, no compass shown before the guess. Ten seconds and you’re done.
Is there a game that trains your sense of direction?
This one. Noriento is free, plays in a mobile browser with no download or account, and scores each daily guess in degrees of error so you can watch the number fall over weeks. If you want the wider view, there’s an honest roundup of the whole category — including the ones we don’t make.
Can you actually train your sense of direction?
Yes — it’s a trained skill, not a fixed trait. GPS stopped most people from practising it, not from having it. Noriento gives you the repetition and the exact error number that the skill needs, and a few weeks of daily guesses is usually enough to watch that error shrink. There’s more on the evidence in the guide.
Is it normal to not know which way north is?
Completely. A 2015 study in PLoS ONE asked people at ten real outdoor locations to point north; the answers lined up with the nearest road rather than with north. The paper is called “The Map in Our Head Is Not Oriented North”. The street grid you’re standing on is quietly acting as your compass — Noriento just tells you by how much it’s off.
Why do I get lost in places I know well?
Because you’ve stored them as routes — turn left at the bakery — rather than as a map anchored to something fixed. It works until you come out of a different door. The long answer is here.
How is Noriento different from a compass app?
A compass shows you north. Noriento asks you to find it first, then shows you how close you were. The game is the gap between what you felt and what the compass confirms — and that gap is what gets smaller with practice. A compass app is a tool; Noriento is training.
Do I need an account to play?
No. Open it, play, done — no sign-up and no download. Your streak lives on your device. You can create a free account later if you want to sync across phones.
How much does Noriento cost?
The daily north guess and Cardinals are free forever, no account needed. An optional founder subscription is $1 a month and unlocks Places, Moon, Sun and Planets — and one of those is free to everyone each day anyway.
Does Noriento work on iPhone and Android?
Any phone with a compass: Safari on iOS 13 or newer, Chrome on Android. It installs to the home screen as a Progressive Web App, and it’s also on Google Play. Desktop browsers have no compass, so the site shows a QR code to move you to your phone.
How long does it take each day?
Five to ten seconds. One guess, one result, done. You can play anywhere you can stand still for a moment — a street, a park, a hotel room in a city you’ve never been to.
How does Noriento read true north?
On iPhone it reads true north straight from the system compass, which already corrects for magnetic declination. On Android it reads the magnetic heading, which sits a few degrees off true north depending on where you are. It does not need your location to run the daily north guess.