I’ve been building Wandering Around, a free browser game in which you can walk around any town or city on Earth. The whole world comes from OpenStreetMap, so I’d like to share how it uses OSM data and ask this community for feedback.

Play it here: https://wanderingaround.games (works on phone and desktop, no account needed) Screenshots and a short video: [link naar je itch.io-pagina]

How the map is built

• Streets, buildings, water, parks and bridges come from OpenFreeMap vector tiles (zoom 14, OpenMapTiles schema). The game fetches the tiles around the player, decodes them in the browser, stitches buildings that are split across tile edges and turns everything back into OSM-style features with tags. The game logic works on those tags, so it is the same code whether the data comes from tiles or (as a fallback) from Overpass.
• 2D and 3D: the same data drives a 2D map and a 3D eye-level view. Building heights come from OSM where they are tagged.
• Transit: train routes and stations, city buses, ferries and signposts come from Overpass queries, so you can travel between real stops and stations.
• Country map: towns, airports and ferry ports within 100 km come from pre-built tiles made from Overture, OurAirports and Natural Earth.

What the game adds itself

Vector tiles leave out some details, such as single trees, benches, crossings, traffic lights and roof shapes. The game fills those in itself so streets don’t look empty. These are decoration, not data: they are never written back anywhere.

Wikidata postcards

Every feature with a wikidata tag (and, in the Netherlands, ref:rce for national monuments) becomes a landmark. When you visit one you get a postcard with:

• a photo from Wikimedia Commons (P18), with the photographer and licence shown,
• year built (P571), height (P2048) and floors (P1101),
• a summary from Wikipedia in your language.

… See full entry