A world of facts.
Room for nuance.
Real places deserve real sources.
Here is how we draw the world, and compare it.
One roster. A clear convention.
The source atlas covers all 195 UN members and permanent observers. New expeditions include countries with at least 300,000 people in this frozen data edition, plus Andorra and Malta. Monaco, Holy See, and Liechtenstein are explicitly excluded. This leaves 174 countries to conquer. Older expeditions keep their original roster and rules.
Countries outside new expeditions (21)
Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Holy See, Kiribati, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Nauru, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Seychelles, São Tomé and Príncipe, Tonga, Tuvalu.
The cutoff limits very small populations; it does not exclude island nations as a group.
We aim to use metropolitan or core territory consistently. Alaska and Hawaii belong to the United States; Greenland is excluded from Denmark. Dependencies and separately administered overseas territories are excluded where our sources support that distinction. Country-specific exceptions and source limitations are recorded with the dataset.
Country outlines are simplified for the globe. Small countries appear as dots, and all ruled countries are available in the searchable list.
Where each figure comes from.
The fine print is part of the game.
Each available value stores its source, year and reference link. They are shown after a round. Values are rounded to the precision you see before comparison, so identical displayed numbers always tie.
A missing figure is an explicit gap. We disable that category for the matchup and explain why. No guessed value is silently passed off as a fact.
The atlas is downloaded and checked in advance. Playing a round never makes a request to a third-party data provider. A missing connection can pause play, but your expedition stays saved.
What still deserves a closer look.
Countries are not equally strong across these eight measures. We retain all 195 source records and audit the distribution of advantages in the playable roster; the original goal that every country has a statistic above the 70th percentile is a design target, not a claim that the current categories achieve it.
All 195 flag palettes have been reviewed with AI assistance against the SVG artwork. The most complex flags also received a separate review. This is not an independent human audit; the recorded palettes explain which colours count. Territorial definitions and older reference years also need care when comparing sources.
Every matchup has at least two available categories.
Where figures are unavailable
Wealth per person 7 countries
Cuba, Eritrea, North Korea, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen.
Countries with fewer strong categories
A country's strongest category must beat at least 70% of opponents to meet our target. 10 countries currently fall below it.
Curiosity comes first.
Orbino is a game about getting to know the world. Borders, names and statistics are conventions for play, not a claim that real places fit neatly into eight numbers.
Ready to explore