Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you wanted to know about Orbital Drift but were too busy naming countries to ask.
How does scoring work in Flag Down?
Flag Down doesn't use points — it's a streak run. Every flag you name correctly adds one to your streak, and a single wrong guess ends the run and shows you the correct answer with a short summary of the country. Your best-ever streak is saved and displayed above the game. You get one hint per flag (continent, a first-and-last-letter pattern, and the capital); hints don't cost you anything, but they're tallied and included in your shareable result, so a hint-free streak is the real flex.
How does Map the Planet check my answers?
Map the Planet accepts common alternate names and spellings for each country. Capitalisation, accents, punctuation and a leading "the" are all ignored, and it matches official names plus widely used alternates — so UK, Britain and Great Britain all work, as do USA and US, Ivory Coast for Côte d'Ivoire, Cape Verde for Cabo Verde, Swaziland for Eswatini, Turkey for Türkiye, Burma for Myanmar, DRC or DR Congo for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor for Timor-Leste, and DPRK or ROK for the Koreas.
Do I need an account to play?
No account, ever. Progress is saved directly in your browser's local storage — your Flag Down streak, best streak, and the countries you've already found in Map the Planet all persist between visits. The trade-off: progress is tied to that browser, so clearing site data or switching devices starts you fresh.
Is Orbital Drift free?
Yes — Flag Down and Map the Planet are both free to play, with no account required to start.
Where does your flag and country data come from?
Country names, alternate spellings, regions, capitals and flag images come from the REST Countries API (restcountries.com), which is built on public country data. Flag Down plays with the 193 UN member states plus Vatican City and Palestine as observer states. The short country write-ups shown after a wrong guess are drawn from Wikipedia summaries.
How often does the daily flag in Flag Down change?
Once a day, at midnight in your own local timezone — not UTC. The day's flag order is generated from the date itself, so everyone playing on the same calendar date gets the same sequence.
Can I play on mobile?
Yes — Orbital Drift is built to work in any modern mobile or desktop browser without needing an app download.
I think an answer was marked wrong incorrectly — what do I do?
Head to our Contact page and let us know which country or flag it was. We review and correct data issues regularly.
Will you add more games?
Probably — but nothing is on a fixed schedule, and we'd rather not promise dates we can't keep. Right now the focus is on making Flag Down and Map the Planet better and expanding the Learn guides. If there's a geography game you'd love to see, tell us on the Contact page; suggestions genuinely shape what we build next.
Is Orbital Drift good for classroom use?
Yes — teachers use Flag Down and Map the Planet as warm-up activities or homework. See our Study Guide for a suggested structure if you're using it in a classroom setting.
Still Have Questions?
We're happy to help. Reach out and we'll get back to you.
Contact Us