About GeoG

The project

GeoG came out of a simple frustration: online geography quizzes all ask the same questions, about the same thirty countries, through the same interface. After the first week, you are going in circles.

The idea was therefore to build a training loop that covers all 195 countries, from the most obvious to the most obscure, and that varies the angle of attack: recognise a flag, recall a capital, locate a country on a three-dimensional globe, identify an outline, link two states border by border, rank five countries by a hidden criterion. 12 game modes in all, each one drawing on a different kind of memory.

On top of that sits a daily challenge: one run, identical for every player in the world, renewed every day at midnight UTC. In practice it is the format that produces the most progress — a few minutes daily beats one long weekly session, as our guide on study method explains.

Who builds GeoG

GeoG is developed and maintained by Paul Pousset, an independent developer in France. There is no studio, no editorial team and no investor behind the project: it is one person's work, which explains both the update cadence and the fact that you can write directly to the person who codes the game — see the contact page.

Where the data comes from

The quality of a geography game rests entirely on the quality of its database. GeoG's is assembled from three kinds of source, then checked by hand.

• The country list follows the 193 UN member states plus the two observer states, the Holy See and Palestine. That choice, its alternatives and its limits are set out in our guide How many countries are there in the world?
• The numeric indicators — population, area, density, GDP, GDP per capita, life expectancy, forest cover, CO₂ emissions per capita, literacy rate and a couple of dozen others — come from the World Bank's public series, taken at their most recent available year.
• The non-numeric data — capitals, flags, geographic outlines, land borders, languages — is compiled from public references and proofread by hand, case by case, particularly for the ambiguous situations: countries with several capitals, enclaves, disputed territories.

The whole chain is reproducible: a single script regenerates the game database from the sources, which makes it possible to refresh the indicators without redoing the editorial work.

The design choices

No mandatory account. The daily challenge plays immediately, with no sign-up. An account is only needed for what genuinely requires one: saving progress, playing online against others, appearing on the leaderboard.

A style rather than a template. The interface borrows from nineteenth-century atlases — parchment, compass rose, engraved type. That is a deliberate choice: a geography game ought to make you want to look at the map.

Doubt rather than false certainty. When a question admits several defensible answers — constitutional capital versus seat of government, say — the game favours the wording that does not mislead, even if that means dropping the question.

How the project is funded

GeoG is free and will stay free. Development is funded by advertising, in two forms:

• optional videos, which the player explicitly chooses to watch in exchange for coins or an extra life — never forced;
• display advertising on the site's content pages, like the one you are reading.

No game data is sold. What is collected, why, and how to delete your account is set out in the privacy policy.

Where to play

In the browser at playgeog.com, with no installation, or in the native app on iPhone and iPad and on Android. Progress syncs across platforms as soon as you use an account.