Pokémon Go will have gyms, region-specific Pokémon

The promise of Pokémon Go allows players to collect the titular pocket monsters in the real world, but what would a true Pokémon master be without a few gym badges to prove his or her merit?

Fear not, the upcoming mobile game, which allows players to explore the real world and capture Pokémon on their phones, will include gyms, as the game’s developers Niantic revealed in a new interview.

“Gyms will be a bit more rare. You want to find gyms so you can level up your Pokémon and battle there, so it will take a little more effort to get there,” Niantic’s CEO John Hanke said in an interview with GamesBeat.

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The sprawling interview, which also covers Niantic’s previous work and the idea at large of combining the real world with gameplay also assures players that they won’t be hunting for hours on the search for a Pokémon to battle and capture.

“Our goal is to make it so you can walk out of the house and within five minutes, you can find Pokémon. It may not be the most rare Pokémon in the world, but there’ll be a population of Pokémon living near all our players,” Hanke said.

And though the developer appears to still be plotting out how and where certain Pokémon will appear, Hanke did reveal that a Pokémon’s type could affect where players find it, just like in the game, and that some Pokémon may be tied to different parts of the world.

“Pokémon will live in different parts of the world depending on what type of Pokémon they are. Water Pokémon will live near the water. It may be that certain Pokémon will only exist in certain parts of the world. Very rare Pokémon may exist in very few places,” Hanke said.

The game, which is set to release in 2016, will allow players to trade Pokémon, of course, and even coordinate events to encourage that trading. For more on the game and Niantic’s work, read the full interview with GamesBeat.