How to Play Planet Pop

Play a round

Each prompt asks you to name a country that fits its clue. A theme chip gives more context

Drag or swipe to spin the globe, use a wheel or pinch to zoom, then tap a country. On desktop, press Enter or choose Lock to confirm

A correct answer adds stars and one to your streak, then opens the card draft. A wrong pick or timeout removes one heart, resets the streak, reveals the right answers and lets you continue

The run ends when you reach zero hearts

Hearts and timer

You begin with three hearts and can collect more up to a maximum of five

Each question starts with 30 seconds. After every five right answers, the timer drops by one second until it reaches a 15 second minimum

The timer pauses while the browser tab is hidden and during answer reveals and card drafts. Freeze can stop it for one question, while More time adds five seconds per question and stacks up to three times

Stars and streaks

The base answer tiers are Common for 10 stars, Uncommon for 20, Rare for 30 and Hidden gem for 50

Question difficulty multiplies the tier value by 1, 1.5 or 2 for levels 1, 2 or 3

Your streak multiplier starts at 1x and rises by 0.1x per consecutive right answer, up to 3x. Hot streak changes the increase to 0.2x per answer

Card effects can change a question's score. The game rounds the final result after applying tier, difficulty, streak and card modifiers

Choose a card

After every right answer, choose one of three different cards. The draft is weighted 60% toward common cards, 30% rare and 10% epic, and you must choose before the next question

Instant cards apply now, hints go into your pocket for use during a question, and charms stay active for the run. The hint pocket has three slots

Hints include map and timer help, a free pass and a shield against one wrong pick. Charms can add time, boost rare answers or protect a streak

Questions and themes

The bank has 200 questions across 15 themes. The same question does not repeat until the bank has been used up, and a theme never appears twice in a row

Themes include borders, regions, landlocked, lines, coasts, rivers, mountains, islands, languages, flags, capitals, names, groups, rankings and culture

The first three questions come from the 15 classic questions. The difficulty ramp starts with mostly level 1 questions through 10 right answers, mixes levels 1 and 2 from 10 to 25, then mixes levels 2 and 3 after 25

There are 197 selectable countries. Other atlas features are territories and cannot be selected

Globe controls

Drag or swipe to rotate the globe and use the wheel or pinch to zoom. Double tap zooms in

Arrow keys rotate, plus and minus zoom, Enter locks in your pick, Escape deselects, and keys 1 to 3 choose a draft card

Cards

• Extra heart adds one heart, up to five
• Half map fades half of the wrong countries and makes them unpickable
• Spotlight dims each continent with no right answer
• Freebie marks one common right answer
• Skip lets you pass a question without losing a heart or streak
• Freeze stops the timer for one question
• Shield lets you retry after one wrong pick without a heart loss
• Name tags show country names on the globe for one question
• Double up doubles the score for one question
• Gem radar makes hidden gems glow for three seconds
• More time adds five seconds to each question and stacks up to three times
• Hot streak grows the streak multiplier by 0.2 per answer instead of 0.1
• Treasure hunter adds 50% to rare and hidden gem answers
• Lucky clover gives each mistake a 25% chance of costing no heart
• Phoenix once leaves you with one heart when you would lose your last
• Streak saver once keeps your streak after the next mistake