Say "GPS game" and most people think of Pokémon GO. The big location-based games are made by large studios, and their worlds are richest in big cities. Kokume is a different case: it is developed by a small independent team in Czechia, and it started out on the map of Czechia and Slovakia.
What Kokume is
Kokume is a mobile strategy game on a real map. The streets, parks, fields and forests around you form game regions you can claim, build on and defend. On land you hold you set up mining and production, haul resources by cart along routes you plan yourself, and compete for territory with players from two other factions. An attack on someone else's region plays out as a tower defense battle against the defenses another player built. Raid bosses also appear in the open countryside, and players take them on together.
In short: as if Factorio and Ingress had a baby.
What the game is built on
The Kokume map is based on open data from OpenStreetMap, created and maintained by volunteers all over the world. From it the game knows where there is forest, field or water, and uses that to decide which resources can be mined in a region. Region boundaries follow administrative divisions - from the smallest local districts up to larger units. That way every municipality has game territory, not just cities full of landmarks.
Where you can play
Every country means map data, region boundaries and a resource calculation for its whole landscape. That is a lot of data and we are a small team, so we add countries one at a time and do each of them properly rather than half of Europe at once. We started with Czechia, our home, and neighboring Slovakia. Today you can play in Czechia, Slovakia, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Belgium.
What that means for players
- The game speaks your language. Kokume and its wiki are available in English, German, Polish and Czech.
- The developers are within reach. On our community Discord you can write to us directly, and player ideas really do make it into the game.
- It is free. Kokume has no in-app purchases, no premium currency and no ads.
- It is in early access. The game keeps changing - things get added, things get reworked. If you join now, you get a say in where it goes.
Where to get it
Kokume runs on Android 7.0 and newer and can also be played in a web browser. There is no iOS version yet. To get started, read Getting Started in our game wiki, and if you want to compare it with other games first, take a look at our overview of GPS games.