
Show HN: A mobile-friendly, web-based, countries of the world game - emurph55
https://geogee.me
======
throwaway2016a
As someone who is kind of awful at geography I think this is pretty great.
Kind of a Duo Lingo for countries of the world.

However, I found the population ones frustrating because there were multiple
answers kind of in the same ballpark. For example, I think it makes sense to
teach people a country of 20 million vs a country of 100 million but
57,100,000 vs 57,200,000 is a bit of a trick question to me.

Also, when I did get questions wrong I found the app very unhelpful to correct
me. As others have stated, those info boxes are much more useful after a wrong
answer than a right one. Most of the ones I got wrong was a guessing game to
randomly pick something.

~~~
babuskov
Looks like there's a bug there. I got two identical answers to choose from:

[https://imgur.com/a/kvHCOrb](https://imgur.com/a/kvHCOrb)

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Waterluvian
This is great. I'm a big fan of anything that makes memorization and learning
fun and iterative.

Is it appropriate if I share one of my own creations?

[https://ablakey.github.io/state-
machine/index.html](https://ablakey.github.io/state-machine/index.html)

The State Machine is a little geography game I made that I think can be
addictive due to its simplicity.

~~~
lewisj489
Your stupid sort page made me laugh. You should create more stuff for
[http://todays.pointless.click/](http://todays.pointless.click/)

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eksemplar
The “back” function seem broken on mobile. Also, it’s not a fun learning
experience if you don’t get the correct answer when you get something wrong.

It’s also not “unlucky” to be wrong, don’t patronise your users.

~~~
BenjaminBini
You just can't go back, I think it's wanted.

You get the answer, when you get something wrong the question is asked again
at the end until you get it write.

~~~
kilburn
That's fine, but I had to click the back button a dozen times to get _out_ of
the game, which is annoying.

~~~
superflyguy
Long-press the back button.

~~~
kilburn
Yeah, for some reason on my firefox mobile (stable) the history list
disappears immediately after releasing the long press, making the selection of
a specific history item impossible :S

In any case, why does the site pollute the history with what are effectively
noop items?

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uxamanda
Neat! Happy it works on mobile web. FYI, there’s a short pause after getting a
wrong answer that almost seems like the app is waiting for me to try again.
Sadly if I tap during that moment, the ui updates and then I get the next one
wrong too. Maybe hide or grey out the answers once you get a question wrong?
Or as a sibling comment said, just show the extra info right or wrong. Thanks
for sharing!

~~~
emurph55
On the to-do list. Thanks!

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arendtio
Looks pretty and feels good :-)

Reminds me of the 'Ultimate Geography' decks for Anki [1].

Would love to see some kind of a multiplayer version.

[1]:
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2109889812](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2109889812)

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k__
Breaks the back-button.

Would be kinda nicer if it didn't store so much data in the URLs.

~~~
emurph55
Thought I could get away with breaking the back button because it's a game but
I agree it is a bit annoying. Regarding the URLs. The reason for them holding
so much info is that I wanted a structure that would allow them to work even
when offline

~~~
k__
I clicked on one category, didn't like the question and couldn't go back. :(

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Henk0
Nice!

I like the idea and design

Two things that bugged me:

1\. I'd like a fast mode, where you just get immediate feedback on the answer
(with correct answer displayed) and then onto next question immediately
without showing the country info bit

2\. who's flag -> whose flag (or "which country's flag is this")

~~~
jerrre
> I'd like a fast mode, where you just get immediate feedback on the answer
> (with correct answer displayed)

I'm really annoyed by unnescesary delays, this mode with improve it tons for
me. Even leaving the info could be fine, but it took ~1s delay for it to
appear..

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frredom
This is cool. One nit: The "read more about" button isn't a button, but a
clickable div. So it doesn't look like a clickable element to Vimium, screen
readers, etc.

Otherwise, good job.

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scotty79
I thin you should gather people's mistakes for each question and present
correct answer together with some of the most mistaken ones.

I got 6/7 capitals right (7th on second try) just by eliminating insane
sounding ones and without actually being able to name the capital of any
country I was asked about.

~~~
emurph55
Thanks. That is something that will be added soon. The push notifications
already work off a similar idea

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emurph55
Just a simple game I made to keep myself occupied on flights and on the metro.
Still very much a WIP.

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nderjung
I think the 'some info' page should be shown after every answer, especially on
answers that were marked as incorrect. How will I ever learn if it doesn't
tell me what the right answer is? Other than that, nice work!

~~~
emurph55
Yeah, I think you are right about that. I'll try work something in at lunch
tomorrow. Cheers

~~~
ashrodan
It's the punishment for not getting the answer right! I thought the same
initially, to show the explanation after every try but the explanation comes
as reward once you get it right. You get unlimited chances to guess the wrong
ones so might as well force the learning of the question and reward it with
the info.

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mntvrtx
Looking at the URL: [https://geogee.me/-ze-a1-ah-za-a2-xa4-zg-aa-zg-a4-zg-ab-
zg-a...](https://geogee.me/-ze-a1-ah-za-a2-xa4-zg-aa-zg-a4-zg-ab-
zg-a5-za-a3-b8-zg-af-bd-zg-b5-ze-a6-ze-ag%22Ljubljana%22-zg-al-d200-zb-
ag%22Yerevan%22-zg-al-d010-zb-ag%22Sana'a%22-zg-al-d242-zb-ag%22Anju%22-zg-
al-d160-zf-za-a7-ze-ag-c200-zg-
ay%22Ljubljana%22-zg%22lnglat%22%3A%5B14.81666666-zg46.11666666-za-ak-e200-zg-
al-d200-zd-be-ah-zf-zf), it seems that the answer is always the last city name
mentioned in the URL, so you could cheat at this pretty easily

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puranjay
Love it. Especially like that it's actually difficult. I used to think I'm
good at geography, but after getting just 4/7 on the capital cities quiz,
maybe I'm not so hot after all.

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soneca
I too was annoyed by the broke back button. But that's a great game. I enjoyed
the chance to get it right by the end of the quiz and the educational content
after each question.

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indifferentalex
Just as a heads up since I don't see it mentioned in the comments yet, I got a
description of Palestine for Peru, apart from the hiccup it's definitely a lot
of fun

~~~
raysarebest
I also got a description of some British protectorate for Åland, but it's
otherwise really cool

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gnodar
Not sure if the "Maps of X" games are titled appropriately. They should be
called "Shapes of X". Even after learning shapes of various countries, I don't
learn where they are on a map, though I can recognize them by searching a map
and eventually identifying them by their shape. Maybe in the info section
after you guess it right, you can show a map and show the country you just
identified highlighted on the map.

~~~
r3bl
There's a map theme in the settings that gives you approximate location in the
background. The actual location is hidden away behind the questions (at least
on desktop).

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oevi
Another good "countries of the world game" which is more based on maps is:
[http://click-that-hood.com/](http://click-that-hood.com/)

Especially the Africa variant:
[http://www.youdontknowafrica.com/](http://www.youdontknowafrica.com/)

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Flands
When asked what country boarders France only Switzerland is marked as correct,
picking Spain is marked as incorrect.

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bmn__
Bugs:

1\. spelling error: Who's flag → Whose flag

2\. Nepal's flag shows a white background, it needs to be transparent!

3\. There's too much artificial delay, eliminate it to vastly improve the UX.
Compare with your competitors; in the time it takes to complete only seven
quiz questions on geogee I can tear through dozens of them on kgeography v0.9.

~~~
emurph55
1\. fixed 2\. cheers. still doing some work on the flags sprite 3\. I will
consider adding a 'fast mode' in the future

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tinktank
Nice work. What's your stack and did you do the site design yourself? It's
quite nice.

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lysp
Quick comment.

I got 3 incorrect questions on population wrong.

In the "try again" mode at the end, I couldn't actually remember which ones I
answered incorrectly for each question.

So it might help to indicate which answers you already got wrong in that
phase.

~~~
emurph55
Thanks. Totally agree. I've been considering on how best to handle that in a
way that helps the user learn. The game is still very much a WIP and I hope to
have an update to the that feature quite soon

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akuji1993
I got a question about the Chinese flag. It being black stars for some reason,
I thought it's another country and guessed wrong three times. Check your
flags, something seems to be wrong with the colors.

~~~
emurph55
ah, thanks. Not sure how i didn't notice that one. There are a few rendering
issues with some of the svgs because I am rendering them as a svg sprite. Will
add that to the list of fixes.

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t0mislav
I made something similiar, but it is not nice looking like this :/

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BrissyCoder
Found a bug: [https://imgur.com/a/mVVi5a8](https://imgur.com/a/mVVi5a8)

Very cool though! :-)

~~~
emurph55
Nice one. I do take a bit of a risk by lazy loading some SVG sprites. Guessing
that's the cause here

~~~
desdiv
Here's another bug: SVG of the Pitcairn Islands flag renders incorrectly on
Firefox 63.0.3:

[https://i.imgur.com/Xoh51Ui.png](https://i.imgur.com/Xoh51Ui.png)

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huxflux
I don't see the point of this except it is open-source. Take a look regarding
how you load the SVG as well.

~~~
system2
What's wrong with the SVG loading? Can you be more specific?

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masonic
Nice.. sort of like Sporcle in style.

It keeps adding to the URL with every answer... will it eventually crash from
that?

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aamitgr8
featured requested - want list of countries which offer work visa(permits)

~~~
bonsai80
It sounds like you might be looking for this Show HN from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18640880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18640880)

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ivolimmen
Is it open source? Would love to contribute other languages (I am Dutch)

~~~
emurph55
probably not quite open source ready yet but you can keep an eye on it here:
[https://github.com/whatever555/geogee](https://github.com/whatever555/geogee)

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lewisj489
Whenever I select an answer I get thrown back to the homepage.

Do you know why?

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nuguy
This is brilliant.

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PavlovsCat
This is really beautiful. And it even made me think about how sad it is to
know nothing about so many small, "unimportant" countries. So I bookmarked it,
and thanks.

Also thank you for making something that is not yet another app that didn't
have to be one. Making a mobile friendly site that looks great on desktop is
certainly possible, and that's the side we should err on IMO.

