GPS games fall roughly into two families. In the first you collect - Pokémon, monsters, items, points. In the second you compete for the map itself. The second family is smaller, but for players who enjoy planning it is far more interesting.
Collecting vs. territory: two kinds of games where you walk around
In collecting games like Pokémon GO, the map is mainly the place where things appear. You catch whatever happens to be nearby and add it to your collection. The map itself doesn't change, and the next day it is the same.
In territory games, the map itself is what you play for. In Ingress, factions capture portals and link them into fields; in Turf, players take over zones and score points for them. Your actions change the map, and other players react to them.
What makes a game a strategy game
Strategy starts where you have to choose between options you can't have all at once:
- Where to expand - close to home, where you have things under control, or along your commute, where the terrain is better?
- What to build - more mining, production, or rather defenses?
- How to connect it - resources are where the landscape allows, and production needs them somewhere else. Logistics decides whether your economy takes off.
- How to defend - territory nobody defends doesn't last long.
Why the real landscape matters
In a strategy game on an invented map, terrain is just scenery designed to be fair. On a real map the terrain is a given: the river, the forest or the housing estate are simply there. Your strategy adapts to the world you live in. Your daily route becomes a supply line, the woods behind your house a resource base, and the hill outside town a place worth heading out to.
Where Kokume fits in
Kokume is a territory GPS game, but territory in it is more than a point or a color on the map. You build mining and production on the regions you claim, resources go through several processing steps, and carts haul them along routes you plan. Three factions compete for territory, and an attack on someone else's region is a tower defense battle against another player's defenses. Regions follow administrative boundaries, so they cover the whole landscape, villages included.
We also compare Kokume with specific games: Ingress, Turf and Factorio. If building is what you enjoy most, check out mobile building strategy games.