About
Flagglobe is a game about knowing flags. A globe, a deck of flags, and one question for each of them: whose country is this?
What this is
The globe carries 241 territories with borders from Natural Earth. The deck holds 235 flags: one for every territory that has a flag of its own and an ISO code. You take the top flag and put it on a country — by clicking, or by dragging the card.
Every drop is checked at once. A flag only stays on its own country — with confetti in its colours bursting from its borders and the name shown for a moment — and it cannot be taken back. A miss returns the card to the deck; after three misses, or Skip, the globe flies to the right country and places the flag itself. At the end the planet stands fully in flags, and that frame is what you share.
Why flags have no labels
A name under the flag would turn this into a different task: not “I know whose country this is”, but “I recognise the outline on a map”. So the name is never there by default: none of the three facts you can open names the country, and the globe carries no labels at all. The Name hint does say it — but only because you asked for it, and a flag opened that way does not join the flags you know.
For the same reason there is no scoring during a round. If the game highlighted a mistake at once, the flag would stop being a question — all that would be left is trying countries until something turns green. Labels will not be added as an option either.
Data and borders
Country outlines come from the Natural Earth 1:50 million dataset; the key for a territory is its numeric ISO 3166-1 code, and the flag is matched by that code. The flag artwork is vector, from the flag-icons set.
Crimea is shown as part of Ukraine. Natural Earth assigns it to Russia; the build moves the polygon to Ukraine and stitches it into a single outline with the mainland — the correction lives in the data itself, not in a colour on the screen.
What the 1:50 million dataset does not contain: the Antarctic ice shelves (Ross, Ronne-Filchner) — there is open ocean in their place, and that is not a bug in the game; and small atolls such as Tuvalu — they exist only in the more detailed dataset.
Which flags are not included
Six territories out of 241 take no flag, which is why the deck holds 235 cards. Five of them — Kosovo, Northern Cyprus, Somaliland, Indian Ocean Territories and Siachen Glacier — have no ISO code in the Natural Earth data, and without a code there is nothing to attach a flag to; for the first three that is a consequence of disputed status, and they do have flags of their own. The sixth, Ashmore and Cartier Islands, does have a code, but shares it with Australia (036): without the exclusion the deck would contain a second Australian flag.
Excluded territories stay on the globe — you can see them and fly to them, they simply take no flag. The list is closed and lives in one place in the build, rather than growing as silent exceptions.
How the facts are checked
Every text on this site is written by hand for it: the three hints behind each flag, the card of each country in Learning, the essay under each flat map, and the guides. Flags of regions are taken from public-domain files or drawn after the official description and checked against it before a map is published; a flag that exists only under a licence the site cannot use is drawn, not copied. Area figures and capitals come from the world-countries dataset, populations are rounded figures from recent estimates, and a fact is kept only when it can be stated plainly and checked in more than one place. Mistakes still happen; a reported one is corrected in the next build and noted on the updates page.
Who makes it and how to get in touch
The game is made by one person — Dmytro Drychyk, a developer from Ukraine who wanted a flag quiz without labels and could not find one. Everything on the site, from the border data fixes to the guides, is his work. Questions, a mistake found on the map, a request to delete stored records — by email to drychykdmytro@gmail.com; the contact page says what to include.
FAQ
Is it free?
Yes, and there is nothing to buy. The game is paid for by an ad shown between rounds — never during one. Details are in the privacy policy.
Is there an app?
No. Flagglobe is a website and runs in the browser; there is nothing to install. On a phone it works the same as on a desktop.
Do I need an account?
No. The game is fully playable without signing in, and records live in your browser's storage. Signing in with Google does two things: it makes your records visible on other devices, and it puts your Daily result on the board on the home page — the board itself is visible to everyone, signed in or not. The Google sign-in script loads only after you press Sign in. Separately from it, Google ads run on the game page — see the privacy policy.
What exactly is stored?
From Google — the account identifier and the name; the email address, language and profile picture are discarded by the server right after the token is verified. Next to them — the board name you appear under, made out of the identifier and replaceable on the home page. From the game — three numbers per mode — time, accuracy and date — and, for Daily, the score line, the grid of squares behind it and how many days in a row you have finished it; and, once a Daily result of yours reaches the server, one row on that day's public board: board name, time, accuracy. Separately from the record, the game sends anonymous statistics about how a round went — misses, hints, which countries were clicked by mistake, how long each flag took — tied to a random identifier that lasts only while the page is open, not to your account. Details are in the privacy policy.
Does it work on my phone?
Yes: the game listens to pointer events, so a flag is dragged with a finger, and the globe rotates and zooms with gestures. One caveat: while a flag is in hand, a second finger rotates the globe rather than zooming it — put the flag down first to change the zoom.
Does it work offline?
Yes. The whole game is a single HTML file: the 3D engine, the fonts, the geometry of the world and the flags are all embedded. A saved page opens with no network, and not a single request leaves it — an automated test checks that on every build.
Is there a leaderboard?
Yes, for Daily only, and only for players who signed in: today's set is the same for everybody, so the times can be compared. The rank goes by time alone. The server takes the numbers as the game sends them and verifies nothing — the board stands on trust, not on proof, and a round with everything skipped can technically finish first, which is why the accuracy is printed next to every time. A row that looks wrong is taken down on request by email.
Which modes are there?
Thirty flags, Daily, All flags, Thirty capitals and Practice on the globe, and one flat map per region: US states, Australian states, Europe, Asia, Americas, Africa, Ukrainian oblasts, UK counties, French regions, Spanish regions, Italian regions, Japanese prefectures, Brazilian states, Polish voivodeships, German states, Dutch provinces, Swedish counties, Canadian provinces, Mexican states, Argentine provinces, Swiss cantons; some of those maps also run as a capitals round: US state capitals, European capitals, Asian capitals, Capitals of the Americas, African capitals, French regional capitals, Spanish regional capitals, Italian regional capitals, Brazilian state capitals, German state capitals, Canadian provincial capitals. Continents are those flat maps — Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas — not a mode of the globe. Every mode that exists has a card on the home page: nothing is promised here before it works.
How do I delete my data?
Local records disappear when you clear site data in the browser. Signing out deletes the session together with its cookie. To delete records stored on the server — the board name and any board rows among them — write to drychykdmytro@gmail.com.