The app store is a real barrier. A few hundred megabytes, an account, permissions, and a decision about whether to keep it — all before you know if you like the thing. Browsers have been able to read your location for years, which means a location game can start with a link instead. Here is what that genuinely gets you, and where it stops.
The Geolocation API is standard in every current browser, on phones and on desktop, and it is not a degraded version of what native apps use — it reads the same GPS hardware. A browser game can therefore know where you are, watch you move, update a live map, and reveal ground as you walk it. Modern browsers can also cache the whole game so it opens instantly on the second visit, and let you add it to your home screen where it looks and launches like any other app. The important part is the first thirty seconds: a link opens, the page asks once for location, and you are playing. No install, no store account, nothing left behind if you close the tab.
Two honest limits. Background tracking. A browser tab that is not on screen does not reliably keep reading GPS — operating systems suspend it, deliberately. So a browser game cannot quietly follow you around all afternoon. For a game built on continuous background presence, that is fatal. For a game you open while you walk, it is barely noticeable, and it is the reason browser games are gentle on battery. Push notifications and deep hardware. Support has improved but remains uneven across platforms. If a game's whole design depends on alerting you when something appears nearby, it will want to be a native app.
Outdoors with a clear sky, expect a position good to a few metres — the same as any navigation app, because it is the same signal. Expect it to be worse between tall buildings, where the signal bounces, and much worse indoors, where the browser may fall back to estimating from Wi-Fi networks and can place you a street away. A well-built location game accounts for this: it ignores implausible jumps, and it does not hand out anything meaningful on a reading it does not trust. If a game seems to reveal or award things while you sit still, it is not filtering, and its map is not worth much.
Kartograf is a fog-of-war exploration game that runs entirely in the browser. The map begins covered and clears where you walk; underneath are landmarks placed by other explorers, treasures hidden for someone to find, and gates into a fantasy overlay of the same streets. The guest map at /try needs no account — it asks for location, and the fog opens as you move. A free Pixygon account is what makes the revealed map persist and connects it to the rest of the Pixygon apps. Installable Android and iOS builds exist for people who want them, but nothing about starting requires one.
The map starts covered in fog
Walk, and it clears where you have been. Kartograf runs in your browser — no download, and the guest map needs no account.
Open the guest mapYes. The Geolocation API is standard in every current browser and reads the same hardware a native app does. The page asks permission once, then can follow your position live while it is open.
No — same signal, same hardware. Accuracy is set by your surroundings: a few metres outdoors, worse among tall buildings, unreliable indoors. The difference between browser and native is background tracking, not precision.
Less than native ones, generally, because a browser tab cannot keep reading GPS once it is off screen. You spend battery while you are playing and stop spending it when you close the tab.
Kartograf runs at kartograf.pixygon.io with nothing to install, and the guest map at /try works without even an account.
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