Kingdoom

A hand-drawn town for iPhone and iPad

Kingdoom

A little town that lives on its own.
You are its god.

Coming soon to theApp Store

Free to play.
No ads.

A whole Kingdoom town drawn in black ink at noon: tall apartment blocks full of stick-figure people, a town hall with a clock, a bell house, workshops with chimneys, and under the ground a mine of ladders and tunnels. The same town at ten at night: the picture has turned to ink, the windows glow, and stars and a crescent moon hang over the rooftops.

Day 46, noonDay 46, 22:00

A town that lives without you

They dig, build, marry and grow old.

Ten settlers arrive on a bare line of ground. Nobody tells them what to do. They dig into the earth and haul the stone up, cut slabs by hand, fire bricks, and raise houses that grow a storey at a time, until the camp is a village, then a town.

  • Miners, haulers, builders, farmers, bakers and smiths at their day's work
  • Weddings, babies, school, comings of age, old age and funerals
  • Festivals round the fire, market days and evenings at the tavern
  • Trucks of stone to market and metal back
  • A runaway cart, a swarm of bees, a lost child, a fire in the night
  • Rain, snow, fog and storms through the seasons
Kingdoom on iPhone at night: the whole picture is white ink on black, a bell house and a clock tower with lit rooms, and the day and population chips at the top.
Day 21, 23:16. Nearly everyone is asleep.
A cross-section of the mine under the town: a long ladder shaft, a lift tower at the top, tunnels and stairs cut into rock, and miners climbing down to work.
Under the street, the mine: ladders, a lift and tunnels, dug by hand.
A wedding in the street: a flowered arch at the foot of an apartment block, the couple beneath it and neighbours waving.
A wedding under the arch: the two of them move in together.

Knocked down, built back crooked

They run, come back, and build on the scars.

When disaster comes, people run, then come back. Neighbours dig out whoever is trapped under the rubble, clear the heap piece by piece and patch the house with whatever is to hand: mismatched blocks, props, a door nailed over a hole. Then they build new floors on top of the scars, so every building carries its history.

A house bursting apart as a blow lands: blocks and furniture flying out of its walls.
A blow lands.
An hour later: where the house stood there is a heap of broken blocks.
An hour later.
Three hours later: a crowd of neighbours at the heap, carrying the rubble away.
Three hours: everyone helps.
Four days later: the house stands again, taller than before, with patched walls and odd blocks.
Four days: two floors rebuilt on the scars.

From the chronicle: “The Vale house grew back to 3 stories, a new floor on its old scars.”

You are the god of this valley

Three tools. One thumb.

Watch, Break and Give. What the town makes of them is up to the town.

Watch

Leave it be and it turns into TV.

Leave the town alone for a moment and it turns into television. The camera goes looking for stories on its own: a wedding, a rescue, children at play, the festival fire. It captions what it finds and moves on. Touch the screen and the camera is yours again.

Tap anyone to meet them: their name, their job, what they are doing right now, their family tree and their own page of the chronicle.

Kingdoom on iPhone, watching by itself: the caption reads The town celebrates! over a wedding arch in the street.
The same camera at night, the picture inverted to white on black: the caption reads Edie runs for a new rope.

Break

Smash anything. Real physics.

Smash anything that was built. Every house is made of blocks and falls like it, with real physics: walls crack, floors give way, towers topple and the rubble piles up where it lands.

  • The fistIn three sizes. Tap to smash; hold and drag to wreck a whole street.
  • LightningSplits a building from its tip to the ground, and may set it alight.
  • MeteorSmashes in through the roof and flattens all around.

Break runs on wrath, which refills by itself. How wrath works.

Kingdoom on iPhone: a meteor has smashed into an apartment block, which is breaking apart into tumbling blocks. Below, the Break row: S, M, L, Lightning and Meteor.
After a lightning strike: a tower falls apart in flames, and the news line reads Lightning split the Bell Tower and brought it down!

Give

Pour anything from the sky.

Hold a finger on the sky and pour. Building materials for the builders, food for the hungry, or something stranger: a wanderer walking in down the road, a sapling, a change in the weather. People rush over to use what you give.

  • Stone
  • Slabs
  • Bricks
  • Metal
  • Logs
  • Ore
  • Bread
  • Grain
  • A stranger
  • A sapling
  • Rain
  • Sun
  • A storm

Gifts have their price too: bread nobody can eat goes to the crows, and two haulers may squabble over a heap from the sky.

Kingdoom on iPhone with Give open: a stream of bricks pours from a small cloud onto a growing heap in the street, with a tally of +118. The palette below shows goods, food, a stranger, a sapling and the weather.
The chronicle sheet with its filters, All, People, Buildings, Mine and God, and entries with small pictures, the last one reading A heap of bricks fell from the sky!

Night falls in ink

The picture flips. The windows light up.

When the sun goes down the whole picture turns over, like ink across the page. Windows light up, lanterns rise over the festival fire, and the lantern crews walk the streets. Morning comes back on its own.

The festival at dusk: bunting and paper lanterns over a fire, people dancing, kites in a hatched evening sky. The same festival an hour later, at night: the picture is white on black, the lanterns glowing.
The festival on day 12, at 20:09 and at 21:00. Drag across to let the night in.
A storm over the apartment blocks: dark hatched clouds and slanting rain over the street.
A storm rolls over the valley.
Snow falling at night on the same blocks: lit rooms, people asleep in their beds.
Snow at night. Most of the town is asleep.

The town remembers

Every moment, written down.

Every birth, wedding, collapse and gift goes into the chronicle, with a little picture of the moment. Tap a line and the camera flies back to where it happened.

The almanac keeps the town's firsts, its founders and its best moments, and makes a card you can share. Every town has a code: give it to a friend and they can found the very same valley.

Close the app and the town waits for you. Come back and it lives the time you were away, up to three days, and tells you what happened while you were gone.

The almanac: Day 22, 44 people, 3 generations, Spring of year 2, and a share card with a drawing of the town.

And it remembers you

Strike too hard and they build you a shrine.

Strike too hard and the town grows wary of the sky: it builds you a shrine, and the family you struck lays an offering on it at dusk. Strike the same family twice and they pack up in the morning and walk off down the east road.

Be generous instead, and the children kneel in the street and draw a hand in the sand.

The shrine at night: a small stone building with a candle-lit offering bowl inside, a tree beside it and a stall next door.
The shrine by night, an offering lit on the altar.

Every stone has a story

Follow one stone from the rock to a wall.

Tap a building and it tells you where its stones came from: “A stone from 66 m down, cut by Ruby, laid by Maud.” Here is one real stone, followed from the rock face to a wall:

  1. A miner crouched at the rock face, deep underground.
    Day 32, 19:17Finn cuts a stone out of the rock 50 m down.
  2. A lift cage full of stones in the mine shaft.
    19:58It rides up the shaft in the lift cage.
  3. The brickworks, a worker beside the kiln's arched mouth.
    Day 33, 09:15Out of the kiln: it is a brick now.
  4. A truck at the brickworks being loaded with bricks.
    11:18Ezra loads it onto the truck.
  5. Builders on the scaffold of a new apartment block.
    Day 34, 07:50Rhea lays it into the wall of the Apartments.

Prices, plainly

Watching and giving are free. Forever.

Breaking runs on wrath, and your wrath comes back by itself.

Always free

  • Watching the town, and its camera
  • Every gift: goods, food, a stranger, a sapling, the weather
  • A swing that hits nothing built
  • The chronicle, the almanac and new towns

No ads, anywhere, ever.

Wrath

A blow that lands costs wrath:

  • S 1
  • M 2
  • L 3
  • Lightning 4
  • Meteor 6

Your meter refills one a minute, up to 30, even while the app is closed. Want more at once? Bought wrath never expires, and the meter is always spent first.

  • A fistful of wrath100 wrath$0.99
  • A jar of wrath600 wrath$4.99
  • A thundercloud1,500 wrath$9.99

For good

Two one-time unlocks, yours for good:

  • The hourglass8× speed (1×, 2× and 4× are free)$1.99
  • Endless wrathBreak costs nothing$14.99

Both belong to your Apple Account: Restore purchases in the shop brings them to your other iPhone or iPad.

Prices are in US dollars; the App Store shows them in your own currency. Bought wrath stays on the device it was bought on. More in the FAQ.

  • No ads
  • No accounts
  • No tracking
  • Your town stays on your device
The Kingdoom app icon: a stick figure in a crown swinging a pick over black earth.

A town is waiting for its god

For iPhone and iPad.

Kingdoom needs iOS 18 or later.

Coming soon to theApp Store