08/28/2026 - The Reviewer expansion, and a shop to keep the game running
Hi geocachers!
Tonight, geocoins.io steps up a gear. The Reviewer expansion enters the game at 8:30 pm (Paris time), and the shop opens its doors at the same moment. Right after that, on Tuesday 1 September at midnight, the weekly and monthly leaderboards begin.
This note is a slightly unusual one: on top of the usual new features and fixes, it takes the time to show you what sits behind the shop window — how many geocoins were drawn, how many lines of code were written, and why a shop appears today in a game that will stay free.
Enjoy the read, and happy hunting!
The Reviewer expansion is live
The collection grows from 204 to 400 geocoins this Friday 28 August at 8:30 pm. In a single evening there is almost twice as much to collect as there was at the start, with 113 extra commons, 51 rares, 16 epics and 4 legendaries. The 8 season geocoins will follow a little later, on 22 September 2026.
To go with this wave, 480 extra geocaching trivia questions have been added to the pool of 540 already in the database.
What a game like this one adds up to
The question comes up often: « is it a lot of work, all that? ». Here are the real figures, as of 28 August 2026, since the very first line written on 3 May 2026.
1,685 commits. A commit is the smallest unit of a developer's work: a change to the code saved, dated and explained in one sentence — « I changed this, here is why ». It is what makes it possible to go back when an idea turns out to be a bad one. 1,685 of them in 118 days, 1,061 for the website and 624 for the game server.
Around 153,000 lines of code — 80,600 for the site you are looking at, 72,700 for the server that hands out rounds, geocoins and leaderboards. Of that total, close to 27,600 lines exist only to test the rest: automated checks that replay the rules of the game on every change, so that a fix in the forge does not quietly break the market.
Around 500 bugs fixed. Roughly speaking: that is the number of changes whose only purpose was to repair something that did not work as promised.
94 actual working days across 118 calendar days — evenings, nights and weekends included.
Somewhere around 500 hours of development, plus a hundred hours or so spent purely on creating the geocoins: finding the caches to honour, gathering the information, composing the artwork, writing the descriptions and the questions, then translating all of it into four languages.
All of it for a game that is free, has no advertising, sells no data, and has never asked anyone for anything.
The shop: chip in, if you enjoy the game
An online game costs money every month: a server, a database, image storage, backups, a domain name. Until now it has all come out of my own pocket — and that is perfectly fine, because it is a pleasure.
But there are more and more of you, and the infrastructure is starting to feel the strain. So the shop opening tonight is first and foremost crowdfunding: a way to lend a hand if you enjoy the game, and only if you feel like it.
What it would make possible, in order:
🌐 60 € — the geocoins.io domain name is funded for a whole year (that would already be amazing!)
🖥️ 540 € — server hosting is 100% covered for a year (we are allowed to dream)
🏆 1 080 € — year two, server and domain included, is fully secured (epic!)
🪙 2 450 € — and why not create a real, exclusive physical geocoin in the image of the game? (le-gen-dary)
The Funding page shows live where the pot stands. It reports the money actually received, payment fees deducted: a 2,99 € pack does not bring in 2,99 €, the payment platform takes its share.
What you will find in the shop
Standard Pack — 2,99 €: 5 geocoins, 4 of them drawn at random and 1 epic (13% chance, otherwise rare). « New geocoin » guarantee: among the geocoins announced, at least one is missing from your collection.
Shiny Pack — 4,99 €: 5 geocoins, including one guaranteed « new » shiny. The other four each have a 20% chance of coming out shiny as well.
Legendary Pack — 11,99 €, at 9,95 € until 11 September: two Standard Packs, one Shiny Pack, 500 Golds and 200 forge points.
Packs are stored unopened in your vault: you open them whenever you like.
Profile skins — 3,49 € or 3,000 forge points: animated decorations for your profile page, visible to other players. Five are on display (Logbook, Project A.P.E., Virtual reward, Earthcache, Power Trail Area 51), and the bundle comes with −10%. Note that they can also be bought entirely with forge points: they are not reserved for those who pay.
Gold letters: every purchase in euros writes your nickname in gold letters on the leaderboards for 30 days. The duration does not stack, it restarts with each purchase.
Three safeguards, because a pack must never be a rigged lottery:
while your collection is below 40%, a pack gives you only geocoins you are missing;
up to 90% of the collection, at least one new geocoin is guaranteed in every pack;
30% of the pack is drawn from the most recent expansion released — so from Reviewer, starting tonight.
And if you would rather not buy anything: nothing changes for you. Every geocoin in the shop can also be won by playing, at the forge, on the market or in a round. The shop shortens the road, it does not open one that is closed to everyone else. And it has no bearing on the top of the leaderboard, where places are earned through achievements.
And I almost forgot: we are giving you a Shiny Pack to mark the opening — head over to the vault to open it!
What is new
1. The weekly and monthly leaderboards — Tuesday 1 September
This is the other big novelty of the wave, and it arrives in a few days: from Tuesday 1 September, at midnight (Paris time), the Leaderboard has three views instead of one.
📅 The week — what you PLAY
Reset every Monday, at midnight Paris time.
It fills up with your achievement progress: King of Knowledge (your round wins), For Glory, Patronage, Quest Monarch, On Fire! and Loyal. One unit of progress = one point for the week.
In other words, this leaderboard rewards what you do that week, not the size of your collection: a player who is just starting out can perfectly well finish ahead of a veteran.
🏆 The month — the sum of your weeks
Every Monday, your weekly rank converts into monthly points. So the monthly leaderboard is not a second leaderboard to play: it is consistency that pays off.
1st: 100 points, then 95, 90, 85, 80… down to 10th (55 points).
Then in bands: 50 points from 11th to 15th, 40 from 16th to 20th, 30 from 21st to 25th, 20 from 26th to 30th, 10 from 31st to 40th, then 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 and 3 points in bands of ten up to 100th.
And 1 point for every player ranked beyond that: nobody leaves empty-handed.
One condition only: you need at least 20 points in the week for your rank to convert — a quiet week must not hand 100 points to a first place who totals three points.
🎁 The monthly prizes
When a month closes, the top ten receive their prize (from 100 monthly points upwards):
🥇 1st — 1,000 Golds, 200 forge points and a Shiny Pack
🥈 2nd and 3rd — 500 Golds, 100 forge points and a Standard Pack
🥉 4th to 10th — 250 Golds and 50 forge points
Yes: the shop packs can be won by playing too.
The first ranked week starts on Monday 31 August, but nothing is counted before 1 September at midnight: it is a partial week for everyone in exactly the same way, and nobody can get a head start before then.
2. The new achievements
Master of the Week — finish the week in the top 20, the top 10, the top 3, then first.
Master of the Month — finish the month in the top 50, the top 20, the top 10, then the top 3.
Collector - Reviewer Set — from your very first Reviewer geocoin, then at 50%, 80% and 100% of the expansion. The thresholds follow the real size of the wave: they will adjust on their own as it grows.
Dazzling - Reviewer Set — the same journey, but in shinies. Good luck.
Dressed to impress — own 1, 2, 3 then 5 profile skins.
All of them are progressive: the rarity of the geocoin you get rises with every tier reached, up to legendary — and the two leaderboard achievements accept the multiplier, so they keep earning points once the last tier is reached.
3. PvP is now played in two groups
« Rookie PvP » and « Elite PvP » each play their own round, in parallel, with their own question, their own rarity odds and their own prize. Elite opens from 250 points onwards. The goal is to stop beginners from being thrown straight up against the most experienced players.
4. A geocoins bot for Discord
Legendary achievements are now announced live on Discord. It is a chance to congratulate your fellow players and to spend some good moments talking about the game. The bot can also show the game statistics, with the /stats command, and the leaderboard with the /classement command (or /rank).
5. Improvements
Forge: tick several geocoins and melt the selection in one go, choosing how many copies of each. And forge sale until 11 September: −20% on forging, −5% on turning a geocoin shiny, on the base game.
Market: list several copies of the same geocoin in a single pass.
Profile: the page is now organised in tabs and shows your player statistics.
Training: you can decline the geocoin you win (setting in your profile), and the game tells you before the question.
Thank you for being here, thank you for playing, and thank you to those who choose to lend a hand. See you in the game and on Discord!
