by MattMeeple

By Niek Corstjens, senior game designer at Meeple Corp, a video game studio that adapts board games for digital play

Digital Always Starts with the Physical

Pauline Detraz requires little to no introduction given her notable work on Kingdomino, Akropolis, ArcheOlogic, City Tour, and numerous other well-known board games in the industry.

In 2025, Kingdomino underwent a graphic redesign, transitioning from Cyril Bouquet‘s 2D art style to Pauline Detraz’s vibrant and contemporary 3D update. Here is how the design process went…

Pauline’s goal was clear: to respect the universe that Cyril had shaped over the years, while meeting a new editorial requirement, that being to open Kingdomino to a wider, more “mass market”, let’s say, more novice audience.

Her first attempts naturally fell in line with the games she’d already illustrated, using a style close to concept art with digital illustrations of environments, just the way she likes them. But this style was too “gamer-y”, appealing primarily to experienced players and lacking the lightness to appeal to a wider audience. The feedback from publisher Blue Orange Games pointed toward simplified, more colorful forms, inspired by the graphic world of mobile games. One of the main references mentioned was Clash Royale.

Pauline had been curious about 3D rendering for a while, so she took the opportunity to improve her skills with Blender — a tool used in various fields, particularly motion design — and created 3D assets. Once the models were validated, she worked on the game’s six biomes, developing building models and the environments they fit into. There was a lot of back-and-forth with the Blue Orange team, particularly regarding the colors of each biome so that they would be clearly distinguished from one another while ensuring a smooth and intuitive experience.

Original concept designs by Pauline Détraz

To pay homage to Cyril’s original work, Pauline incorporated numerous small stories into the tiles to add a touch of poetry. She drew inspiration from childhood tales and European literature, perfect allusions to capture the gaze of a player deep in thought: “Hey, there’s a dolphin in the sea over there…”

In addition, she reworked the buildings so that they evolve based on the number of crowns on the tiles, similar to “Pokémon evolution”.

Transitions from original concepts with work on colors and readability

Aside from the art style, we needed to examine the gameplay metrics, a foundation of the game we were trying to adapt from physical to digital.

Diving Deep into the Kingdom

Our journey began with a crucial mission: crack the code of what makes Kingdomino tick. What keeps players coming back for “just one more game”? Where does the experience stumble? What have devoted fans been championing — or critiquing — over the years? Most importantly, how can we take these insights and craft a digital version that makes both newcomers and seasoned players feel right at home?

We immersed ourselves in every facet of the game, dissecting its mechanisms and the strategic depth beneath its approachable surface. This deep dive wasn’t just about faithful recreation; it was about amplifying what makes Kingdomino special in the first place.

The heart of Kingdomino lies in its beautifully balanced tile-laying system, which features simple rules that hide genuinely tough decisions. Our challenge? Translate that “easy to learn, challenging to master” magic into digital form. We envisioned controls that are intuitive enough for newcomers to feel confident within minutes, yet packed with enough strategic nuance to keep veterans engaged for the long haul.

Bringing the Kingdom to Life

With Kingdomino thoroughly deconstructed, it was time for the exciting part: building our first playable prototype. We started with the essentials, tiles and grids, focusing on what would feel natural and satisfying on a touchscreen. The answer? Drag-and-drop mechanisms that make placing tiles feel genuinely tactile and rewarding.

From there, the kingdom began to take shape piece by piece. Placement restrictions? Check. Terrain types? Done. Basic scoring systems? In the bag. Before long, we had a fully functional solo experience, but let’s be honest: Kingdomino without opponents is like a castle without a kingdom. It was time to bring in the competition!

Going digital opened up new opportunities for the game. We could display the entire tile deck at a glance, giving players perfect information about which dominoes were still in play — something you’d have to track manually in the tabletop version.

The deck view allows users to see what remains in the draw deck

But we also faced a unique challenge: no more casual glances across the table to scope out your opponents’ growing kingdoms. That sideways peek at your rival’s strategy is crucial for advanced play, so we couldn’t ignore it.

Our solution? Dynamic minimaps in the player display, offering instant visual snapshots of everyone’s kingdoms. Now, players can quickly assess the competition without losing strategic depth.

From Brush to Pixel: Translating Pauline’s Art

Now that we had a complete grasp on the game design, it was time to take a visual leap to ensure Pauline’s artwork was fully realized in a 3D world.

Fortunately, Pauline’s vision for a mobile-inspired 3D aesthetic aligned seamlessly with our objectives for the digital adaptation. Our mission was to faithfully preserve the distinctive charm of Kingdomino‘s artwork. To achieve this, we collaborated directly with Pauline, who graciously provided the original 3D source files from her creative process, enabling us to bring Kingdomino to life in its digital form authentically.

Our initial challenge was to extract the essential elements from Pauline’s highly complex and detailed models, then optimize them to ensure smooth performance within the game environment without compromising visual quality. This proved to be an extensive process that required modifications to every asset, from the lake pontoons to the sheep in the fields.

Adapting Pauline’s 3D castle for mobile phones

Once complete, we created a full digital representation of every domino, ensuring each tile accurately represented the original images.

For some Meeple Corp flavor, we also introduced farmers, lumberjacks, wizards, and an assortment of animals, then sent them off to walk around the kingdom. The population grows as the player places more tiles, so the larger a kingdom gets, the more it comes to life.

An overview of each tile in the project file

We now had a working game, with finalized visual domino artwork to boot. The final major visual improvement to be made was the lighting!

The dominoes were visually compelling in isolation, but required additional artistic context to be fully integrated into the floating Kingdomino world. We implemented a skybox and dynamic cloud systems to surround the kingdoms, which enhanced players’ understanding of the floating landscape concept and established directional lighting to add depth and realism to each domino. Wheat fields now shimmer in the daylight, while forests cast atmospheric shadows across the terrain.

Early prototype to final visual aesthetic

To top it off, we even created a dusk mode for the game, which gave the whole scene a more orange hue for a bit of change in scenery. With additional refinement and visual enhancement, the game’s aesthetics were finalized and ready for player experience.

Alternative gameplay set with dusk lighting

Enter the Dream Team

We brought Blue Orange and Kingdomino designer Bruno Cathala deeper into the game at this stage because who better to guide a game’s digital transformation than its creator?

From the outset, we recognized that Bruno’s involvement would be essential. This is his masterpiece, after all, and he understands every nuance, every strategic layer, every moment that makes players lean forward in their chairs.

Throughout development, he provided us with invaluable feedback, focusing on making the core interactions satisfying, offering advice on AI difficulty and strategy, and providing valuable feedback on our early ideas for the progression system in “Lost Kingdom”. Working alongside the game’s architect wasn’t just helpful; it transformed our vision.

As development progressed, we faced some critical questions: What would keep players hitting “play again” long after the novelty wore off? How could we deliver genuine value to those players who’d already memorized every tile in the physical edition?

The answer emerged in the form of “Lost Kingdom”, our comprehensive progression system that’s designed to give players that “just one more game” feeling. We wove quests from Kingdomino: Age of Giants into the base experience, giving players fresh content to unlock and new strategies to master. Pair that with a roster of challenging achievements, and suddenly, players had compelling reasons to return day after day, pushing their skills further with each session.

But we weren’t stopping there. Behind the scenes, we were simultaneously expanding our online matchmaking infrastructure, laying the groundwork for our next major leap forward.

Bruno Cathala providing us with feedback at the 2025 Festival International des Jeux

Taking it to the People: Public Playtests

Then came the moment of truth, our first public community playtest! We assembled a diverse group of testers from die-hard Kingdomino veterans to digital board game enthusiasts discovering the kingdom for the first time and everyone in between. This mix proved invaluable, giving us feedback from every angle imaginable.

The results were eye opening, with two pain points emerging as clear priorities: tile placement mechanisms and turn clarity. Players were getting tangled up in the drag-and-drop process, unsure exactly how and when to commit their tiles to the grid. Even more concerning, they were struggling to track themselves in the player display and often missed their moment to play. The solution? We introduced tap to place as an alternative control scheme and completely re-imagined the in-game UI from the ground up.

However, our best innovation from this playtest stemmed from a relatively simple goal: to make tile placement feel seamless. We wanted that satisfying snap when a tile clicks into place, that responsive feel that you can get in digital games.

Enter “predictive tile placement”. As you drag a tile across your kingdom, the game tracks your finger position and identifies the nearest legal placement spot. Release your finger, and watch the magic happen: the tile flies to its destination, auto-rotates to the correct orientation, and locks into place. It transformed tile placement from a cautious, deliberate action into something fluid and instinctive.

Meanwhile, we were architecting the game’s progression economy by introducing shards, weaving in achievements, and populating the Lost Kingdom with enticing unlocks.

Showcasing “Lost Kingdom”, the new puzzle game mode

Final Touches

We then felt confident that we had captured the essence of Kingdomino, making it tactile and intuitive for a range of players. It was now a question of refining the game, adding sound effects, further fine-tuning it, and hunting down bugs.

As we drew closer to the mobile launch in June 2025, we had content creators testing early access. We began tracking an in-depth list of community feedback, specifically noting which features were requested, how frequently they appeared, and the feasibility of addressing them. We used this list to guide the final stages of development and post-development, focusing our efforts on enhancing features that we knew the community wanted to see improved.

The final gameplay…

The Future of Kingdomino Digital

Through the successful mobile launch, our efforts didn’t slow; in fact, they increased, adding live events with community goals, then focusing on the transition from mobile to PC, which launched on November 20, 2025.

It’s been a fantastic journey so far, and we’re proud of what we have created, which is all thanks to the hard work of our team, Blue Orange, Bruno Cathala, and the Kingdomino fans. We look forward to showing you what’s in store for the future!

If you have any questions about the process or would like more information about Kingdomino Digital Edition — which is now available on Steam (PC/Mac), Apple’s App Store, and Google Play — feel free to leave them below.