The story behind a game born from a habit many people share
I started WikiRacing from an ordinary observation: almost everyone has clicked from link to link on Wikipedia and ended up, an hour later, on an article with nothing to do with where they started. Anyone who actually reads the encyclopedia knows that "rabbit hole" feeling. The idea was to turn that accidental drift into an actual game. Give a starting point, a target, a stopwatch, and see who finds the shortest path.
The concept itself isn't new. Games like Wikispeedia (a university research project) and The Wiki Game have been around for years. What I wanted to add was what a casual solo game was missing: real-time multiplayer, a competitive ELO ranking system, a progressive 300-level campaign, daily challenges shared by every player, and support for 19 languages so the game stays true to each player's own Wikipedia edition.
WikiRacing pulls directly from Wikipedia's public APIs to show real article content. Nothing is copied or stored; every page loads live from Wikipedia the moment you click. The game runs entirely in the browser, no install required, and it's also available as an installable app (PWA) plus native iOS and Android apps.
It's just me. My name is Chris, and I build and maintain WikiRacing on my own: no studio, no outside funding, no team. The game stays free with no account requirement, and updates (new modes, new languages, fixes) ship continuously. Most of the roadmap actually comes straight from what players report, through the in-game button or by email, not from some grand plan I had from day one.
I do. Every article on the WikiRacing blog is written by me, and most of them come out of actually running the site: the piece on how the ELO system works describes the rating maths I implemented, the one ranking each Wikipedia edition by article count came out of picking which languages to support, and the article breaking down the most-played routes is built on real numbers pulled from the game's own database. When a post covers something I haven't measured myself, I say so and link the source.
Got a question, a suggestion, or found a bug? Email me directly at chabnco@gmail.com, or check the Support page for the common ones.