Originality and historical care
How Then & There's historical scenes are made.
Then & There uses AI-generated images as the starting point for historical reconstructions. They are manually prompted, selected, curated and reviewed for use in a game. They are not photographs, primary sources or documentary evidence, and they should not be treated as exact visual records of an event.
From a historical brief to a playable scene
Work begins with a specific moment, a specific place and either a single year or a defensible year range. The brief identifies the event's setting, people, material culture, terrain and the visual clues that should help a player reason towards the answer. Negative instructions are also used to reduce modern objects, incorrect uniforms, fantasy elements and common image-generation defects.
Candidate images are then reviewed rather than published automatically. A visually dramatic image is not enough. It must communicate the intended historical situation, support fair gameplay and avoid details that push a careful player towards the wrong century or region.
The game generally presents dates as years or year ranges. Exact days and months are omitted from player-facing labels because the task is to locate the scene in historical time, not to imply that every visual detail captures one precise instant.
What every scene is reviewed for
Historical plausibility
People, equipment, architecture and setting are checked against the intended period and event. Obvious anachronisms or misleading details are rejected or revised.
Clue fairness
A scene needs enough evidence to support a reasoned guess without simply printing the answer. Useful clues should be distributed across time, place and context.
Visual quality
Images are reviewed for duplicated people, malformed hands or equipment, broken perspective, unreadable text and other generation artefacts that would distract or mislead.
Player-facing context
Each accepted scene is paired with a title, year or year range, location, explanation, clue list, source notes and a further-reading link where available.
Approximation, not authority
Historical reconstruction always involves interpretation. Evidence may be incomplete, contemporary accounts may conflict, and a single image cannot show every important fact. AI generation adds another layer of uncertainty. The scenes are therefore educational and gameplay approximations: prompts for observation and further reading, not substitutes for scholarship, archives or eyewitness material.
The reveal and Historical Moments guides provide context beyond the image. They explain why an event matters, identify the clues the scene is trying to communicate, and link to further reading where available. This separation is intentional: the image creates the puzzle, while the written material explains the history.
Corrections and player feedback
Players can use Report Inaccuracy after a scene to flag a historical concern with the scene title, date and location attached to the message. General questions and suggestions can be sent through Contact Us on the homepage or by emailing contact@thenandthere.co.uk. Reports are reviewed as part of the ongoing curation process.
See the reconstructions in context.
Browse the written guides behind selected scenes, or play the Daily Challenge and inspect the clue notes after each reveal.