How to play Country Draw

Quick start

One round in five steps

1. Choose a map. Use World for countries or U.S. States for the fifty states.
2. Explore if needed. Select Move map to drag, wheel, pinch, or use the zoom buttons.
3. Trace the border. Return to Draw, then press and drag. You may use more than one stroke.
4. Submit the drawing. The button becomes available after the game has enough points to judge your line.
5. Study the reveal. The map zooms to the target. Green shows reality and dashed coral shows your normalized attempt.

Practice has no timer. Use Undo stroke for the latest stroke or Clearto restart before submission. Submitted drawings stay locked for the reveal, then the next round starts automatically. After five scored rounds, the game shows your total, average, highest score, and share action.

Navigate without accidental marks

Draw and Move map are deliberately separate

Draw is the default and locks the canvas to ink. A one-finger drag, stylus press, or long mouse press creates only a stroke; it cannot pan or zoom the background. Use the visible plus and minus buttons for an intentional zoom at any time. Select Move map when you want map-style navigation: drag to pan, use a mouse wheel or trackpad to zoom, or pinch with two fingers on a touch screen. Switch back to Draw before continuing the outline.

The approximate scale updates with zoom; projection and inset geography prevent one exact scale everywhere. After submission the game automatically centers the target and overlays your normalized dashed outline. Move map stays active for inspection.

Read the result

How the accuracy score works

The game compares the shape you remember, not the size or map position of your drawing. Before scoring, it centers the real border and your drawing and scales each one to the same comparison frame while preserving its proportions and direction. Border combines a close trace with a wider structural match, so a shaky finger or simplified coast can still earn credit. Shape fills genuinely closed outlines; open strokes are never silently joined with an artificial straight edge. The final Accuracy is 60% Border and 40% Shape.

Accuracy

The combined result: 60% normalized border fit plus 40% shape or structural fit.

Border

How closely the strokes follow the same outline, with close and forgiving tolerance bands.

Shape

Silhouette overlap for closed drawings, or structural alignment for an open island-chain sketch.

Extra

The share of your relaxed line mask that falls outside the target structure.

You may draw large in an empty part of the map when the named place is tiny. Scaling does not create free points: the scorer preserves aspect ratio, orientation, bends, and the amount of enclosed space. For a compact archipelago such as Japan, adjacent major islands are treated as one softened island chain while tiny remote islands are ignored. A single simplified arc can therefore earn useful partial credit, while a horizontal blob still differs from Japan's long northeast-to-southwest structure.

Drawing strategy

Build the outline from anchors

Before touching the map, identify two or three anchors. For Italy, those might be the wide north, the heel, and the toe. For Chile, they are the long north-to-south axis and the narrow width. For California, use the straight eastern side, the diagonal southeast, and the Pacific coast. Anchors prevent a familiar silhouette from drifting into the wrong proportions or direction.

Draw the longest structural edge first. Straight international borders and broad coastlines are easier to place than small bays or peninsulas. Add the distinctive gesture second, then close the shape with a simplified return line. Islands can be separate strokes. At world scale, trying to reproduce every island or inlet usually adds noise without improving the score.

After the reveal, look for one useful correction instead of memorizing the whole green outline. Was the country too wide? Did its northern edge sit too far south? Was the state tilted in the wrong direction? Make that single correction in the next round. Repeated short attempts create a more reliable mental map than staring at the answer for a long time.

Choose your practice

World mode or U.S. States?

World mode uses an Equal Earth projection so countries keep a balanced global context. The map is a reference surface, but score normalization means you can use any open area for the outline. Start with recognizable shapes such as Egypt, Italy, Chile, or Portugal, then move toward larger or more irregular countries.

U.S. States mode uses a separate map built from Census-derived us-atlas boundary data. It includes the fifty states and excludes Washington, D.C. and the five inhabited territories. This mode is useful for classroom geography, state-location review, and comparing similar rectangular states that differ through one river, corner, or coastline.

Daily serves five World countries and refreshes at 00:00 UTC. This browser saves each best score and the remaining count. Accuracy of 60% or better extends the streak; less resets it. Three rounds show On Fire, five shows 5 in a row. Retries do not add streak points.

Phone and tablet

Drawing on a touch screen

Use a fingertip or stylus in Draw mode. A second finger is ignored there, so holding or drawing cannot trigger a surprise zoom. For a deliberate pinch, select Move map first. The map resizes to the available screen width; rotate a small phone to landscape if you want more room for narrow countries. Short, deliberate strokes are often easier than one long gesture. Undo works per stroke, so breaking a difficult outline into sections also makes corrections faster.

Common questions

What new players usually ask