*Urble*
I made this little map game for fun, as a way of learning more about the world. The name is of course a riff on Josh Wardle's Wordle, and it's 'urble' because the dots in the game are cities, or urban areas. The colours I've used are similar to those from Wordle, just as a nod to it being an inspiration for Urble.

I always play a lot of map games with my sons at home, and since they quite like it - and my non-map-obsessed wife does too - I'm putting it online in case others enjoy it. 

Once you do one Urble you'll get the idea. Some Urbles are relatively easy, but others will be quite difficult. Here's how it works. 

- Each Urble is numbered, so you can keep track of which is which.

- Each Urble features 10 cities in a country - including the capital. 

- The capital is always shown in green and is the third city to appear. 

- A new city appears every 5 seconds, with a little pop sound.

- Each Urble lasts exactly 60 seconds. It's designed to be quick, but not always easy. 

- The cities shown are typically among the very biggest in a country, but not necessarily the 10 biggest by population. They are nearly always among the top 30 by population.

- After 50 seconds you'll see the country outline. Five seconds after that you'll see the country name. If you want to figure it out yourself *before* the country outline appears, just hit pause after the 10th city appears.

- In some countries (e.g. France, the US, Japan) the Urbles are zoomed in to the major landmasses or areas of the country, so in those cases you don't see more distant parts of a country (e.g. French Guyana, Alaska, Okinawa). However, there aren't too many examples of this.

- If a country has more than one official capital (like in South Africa), then I'll only display one of them in each Urble.

- There's a mp4 video file (the main Urble file) and an animated gif for each Urble (for use where video formats are less useful). 

- The mp4 has sound and when the 10th city appears there's a different noise so that you can pause and try to figure out the country, if you haven't already got it. In the gifs you'll just have to count the dots if you want to pause it after 10 dots - which you can do when you see a gif on Twitter, for example.

- How to 'win' the game? All you have to do to win Urble is figure out which country it is before the country shape appears.

- All Urbles will be archived here: https://automaticknowledge.org/urble/

- Countries can be re-used because the selection of cities can be modified, as well as the order in which they appear.

- Map projection? This is sometimes the one most appropriate (in my opinion) to an individual country (e.g. British National Grid, or North America Lambert Conformal Conic or NAD83 / Statistics Canada Lambert). The basic principle I employ here is that I try to use a map projection that presents a country in a familiar shape, avoiding wild distortions - e.g. EPSG:4326 (WGS84) often works well but if I used World Robinson for everywhere then New Zealand would just look weird. But, rest assured, I will not be using web Mercator to display Canada or Greenland or other northerly countries).

- Is north always up? Yes.

- Disputed countries and territories? This is always going to be an issue but my general rule here is to use the outline of a country that the government of the featured country would view as their outline. There are cases where this doesn't necessarily apply but in general this is what I have aimed at. Of course, Urble is supposed to be a fun map game but I have tried to be sensitive to these issues where they arise.


*Scoring*
Urble is just for fun, but if you want to be competitive, here's a guide - bearing in mind that some countries will be much easier than others and this all depends upon where you're from and what your interests are.

If you figure out an Urble after this number of dots...

1 - you are an actual genius, possibly among the top 0.000001% in the world.
2 - you are still an actual genius
3 - you are very very clever and know lots of capital cities and countries
4 - you are very clever
5 - you know a lot about cities and countries
6 - you know a lot about geography in general
7 - let's be serious, this is still very impressive
8 - not too late, you got it in eight (still amazing)
9 - running out of time, but you got there in the end
10 - pause the game and have a think - if you get it before the country shape appears you still win Urble

Can't get it after the country shape appears? No shame in that, we don't all know every country by shape. Maybe you still learned something anyway. How easy or hard it is will depend upon a mix of things, including a) where you're from, b) how into maps and geography you are, c) countries you have visited and d) how early in the morning it is, plus other stuff I can't necessarily think of right now.

If you can name all the cities, and you're not from the country featured, award yourself 10,000 Urble Points. If you can name all the cities and you are from the country featured, award yourself 2,000 Urble Points.

As stated above, the final five seconds show you the name of the country and you can always skip the video forward if you want to.

I will post Urbles on Twitter using the hashtag #urble - feel free to share them on other platforms. Are you a three dot genius? A 7 dot legend? A 10 dot ninja? Let's find out.


*Notes*
- Source for the city locations: simplemaps (https://simplemaps.com/data/world-cities). 
- Source for the country outlines: Natural Earth (https://www.naturalearthdata.com).
- I create the Urble frames in QGIS (https://qgis.org/en/site/) - free, open source mapping software.
- I use Camtasia to produce the mp4 and gif files (https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html).
- The font? That's a free Google font called Urbanist.

Enjoy Urble! 

Alasdair & Isaac Rae
May 2022