Support Protocol

BorderBeat challenges you to identify countries from their outlines. A CNC laser traces the country's border in real-time, and you choose the correct answer from multiple choice options before the burn line timer runs out.

Choose Architect mode for guided play with continent context, or Vexillum to identify countries from their flags instead. Chill Mode lets you practice by continent with no timer or scoring.

In Protocol (ranked) mode, you play rounds of 6 countries. After each round, you draft a gameplay modifier to customize the next round. You have 3 strikes before your run ends.

Modifiers are gameplay cards you draft between rounds. There are 22 total, split into two lanes:

Challenge Lane modifiers increase difficulty but multiply your score (e.g., Spin rotates countries continuously for +150%, Border Test asks you to identify neighbors for +400%).

Survival Lane modifiers make the game easier but reduce your score multiplier (e.g., Repair Strike restores a lost life, Long Fuse slows the burn timer).

BorderBeat offers five optional, non-consumable (one-time) purchases:

BorderBeat Complete — Every unlock in one purchase: Unlimited Architect, Quotidian Archive, Third Modifier Option, and the Survival Pack, bundled at a discount.

Unlimited Architect Mode — Permanently removes the 10-runs-per-day cap on ARCHITECT and VOID. Without it, every device gets ten free Architect runs each day; with it, run as many as you want.

Third Modifier Option — Permanently unlocks a third modifier card during the draft phase between rounds, giving you more strategic choices.

Survival Pack — Permanently unlocks the full survival lane of modifiers, giving you access to defensive tools like Repair Strike, Long Fuse, and more.

Quotidian Archive — Permanently unlocks the ability to replay past daily Quotidian puzzles as practice (the current day remains a single attempt, leaderboard-eligible).

All five are one-time purchases that persist forever. The core game is fully playable without any purchases.

In-app purchases are tied to your Apple ID and can be restored automatically. Open BorderBeat and navigate to Settings (gear icon on the main menu). Your purchases should restore automatically when the app launches. If they don't appear, make sure you're signed in with the same Apple ID you used to make the original purchase, then try restarting the app.

Vexillum is the third mode inside Protocol (ranked) play, alongside Architect and Quotidian. It is the same roguelike run — rounds of 6, three strikes, a modifier draft between rounds — except the laser burns a country's flag instead of its outline, and you pick the country the flag belongs to.

Because a flag has no map around it, there is no continent context to take away: the modifier draft skips the context and flag-color cards in Vexillum. Rotation modifiers still apply, and a rotated flag is fair game.

Vexillum is free, has no daily run limit, and keeps its own Game Center leaderboard separate from Architect's. Finish a Vexillum run with 25 or more correct answers to earn the Hoist achievement.

Chill Mode has three pages: Outlines, Capitals and Flags. The Flags page is open on every continent from the start: it shows you a flag and asks for the country, no unlock needed.

The unlock is for the answer buttons on an outline drill. The NAMES / CAPITALS / FLAGS control switches what the buttons show, so you can see an outline and pick its flag or its capital instead of its name. Those two answer types open one continent at a time: finish that continent's outlines and both its capitals and its flags become available. There is nothing to buy and no achievement to chase — just complete the continent.

Flags Only turns the answer buttons into flag tiles. Normally the country in the prompt cools into its own flag colors as the laser finishes — so if the answers were flags too, the puzzle would solve itself: match the colors on screen to the matching tile.

No Flag Colors renders the prompt as a plain monochrome shape, which removes that giveaway. That is why Flags Only is only ever offered once No Flag Colors is already in your stack, and why Direct Answer cancels it — Direct Answer puts country names back on the buttons, and there are no flag tiles left to show.

Flags Only is worth a 6× score multiplier, and it will not appear in Vexillum, where the prompt is already a flag.

By design. BorderBeat's flags are not images — they are vector shapes, cut into colored regions and burned by the same laser that traces country outlines. Every region has to be simplified into a polygon the GPU can trace and flood with color, exactly the way country borders are.

That works cleanly for bands, stars, crosses and crescents, but a detailed coat of arms or a central emblem comes out as a coarse silhouette rather than fine line art. We keep the emblem — dropping it would make several flags unidentifiable — but it reads as a bold shape, not as a faithful reproduction. It is not a rendering bug.

Quotidian is a daily challenge inside Protocol (ranked) mode. Every day, all players worldwide play the same 25-country puzzle, seeded by the date. You get one attempt. Wrong answers subtract points, but there are no strikes — every run finishes, even a bad one.

The daily leaderboard resets at midnight US Eastern time on Game Center and CloudKit. Past days are not replayable by default; the optional Quotidian Archive in-app purchase unlocks historical puzzles as practice (today's puzzle remains a single attempt).

BorderBeat integrates with Apple Game Center for leaderboards. Your scores are automatically submitted when you complete a ranked run, provided Game Center is enabled on your device.

To be eligible for the leaderboard, your run must be completed in under 1 hour and have no more than 2 background exits during the session.

If Game Center isn't working, go to your device's Settings > Game Center and make sure it's enabled and you're signed in.

Please email us at borderbeat@tylerfit.ch with the following details:

1. Your device model (e.g., iPhone 16 Pro, iPad Air M3)
2. Your iOS version (Settings > General > About)
3. A description of what happened and what you expected
4. Steps to reproduce the issue, if possible
5. Screenshots or screen recordings, if applicable

We read every report and will follow up if we need more information.

BorderBeat requires iOS 26 or later and a device with a Metal-capable GPU (all iPhones and iPads from 2015 onward). The app runs on both iPhone and iPad, with optimized layouts for portrait and landscape orientations.

BorderBeat uses no third-party analytics, tracking, or advertising. Your app settings, per-country practice history, and Quotidian attempts stay on your device. The data that leaves your device is limited to leaderboards and anonymized product telemetry, all stored in Apple iCloud (CloudKit): your chosen username and leaderboard scores sync so leaderboards work across devices, and anonymized events (answer results, purchase-screen views, and daily-result shares — none linked to your identity) help tune difficulty and improve the app. You can turn off all anonymized telemetry with the Difficulty Telemetry switch in the app's account settings. Full details in our Privacy Policy.