Advert: We were given a pre-release version of this game by Meeple Corp via the UK Board Game Review Circle. All opinions are ours and our reviews are always honest.

Today I’m reviewing another new digital adaptation of a board game (the last one being Board&Dice’s Escape Tales: The Awakening). This time, I’m excited to take a look at Meeplecorp’s adaptation of Kingdomino (Blue Orange Games), where players are lords exploring for new territory to expand their kingdoms.

Will your kingdom prosper from bountiful lands or will the barren landscapes topple your kingdom like dominos? 

Game Overview

For the unfamiliar, Kingdomino is a domino-style tile laying game where each player is selecting from a communal set of tiles to build up their own Kingdom. Each turn players select a tile that has one or two terrains on it (lake, forest, mines, etc), and place it into their Kingdom – but it has to be placed next to their castle or another tile of the same terrain already in play.

New tiles are openly drafted from a central selection, and which tile you choose determines the player order for the next round (and therefore who gets to pick tiles first next time!). So, you have to decide if taking a better tile is worth getting less choice to pick from next time. 

The game ends when every player has either completed their 5×5 grid (or 7×7 grid depending on player count), or can’t play a tile within their grid. 

The player with the most points wins. Points are scored for each terrain square, but ONLY IF they are connected to a matching terrain square with crowns!

How does Kingdomino: Digital Edition play?

Meeple Corp have done a brilliant job creating a smooth adaptation of Kingdomino that radiates colour and vibrancy. The menus and gameplay are intuitive – there were a couple of occasions where orientating my tiles felt a bit fiddly, but overall this didn’t detract from my experience

There are 4 modes to this adaptation:

• Single Player: You verses the AI computer which you can set to different difficulties. 
• Pass & Play: You versus a friend who is using the same phone or console as you. You can also add some AIs to your pass and playgame. 
• Online public: Playing online against real people anywhere in the world. 
• Online private: playing online against your friends. 

My main concern going in to playing Kingdomino: Digital Edition was whether the game would be stilted by unbearable in-app purchases, like many other apps. And whilst there are some in-app purchases, at the time of writing these are limited to aesthetic upgrades and expansions. To be clear, you can play as many games as you want on Kingdomino: Digital Edition (albeit one at a time!) there’s ‘you need energy to play’ which is great.

Meeple Corp have done a brilliant job creating a smooth adaptation of Kingdomino that radiates colour and vibrancy.

I was pleasantly surprised that you can unlock a number of personalisation/customisation options from the in-game ‘event’ (at the time of writing: Lost Kingdom) and achievements. Which again are not monetised but do reward you for playing (and winning) more games.

I played the app mostly during the prerelease window, when there were fewer users online. I found matches fairly quickly (within a few minutes of starting a game), but I would like an icon to tell me it’s still looking for players or an approximate time for how long it might take to find a game. A few times, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be joined by other players or not. Since the pre-release I haven’t had to wait as long, but it would still be a nice touch.

How does Kingdomino: Digital Edition compare to the original board game?

So, we played the original Kingdomino when it first was released back in 2016. We didn’t own it but we did play it a handful of times at board game cafés and board gaming events. 

As an app, Kindomino: Digital Edition removes all of the set-up, upkeep and tear down that you would have to deal with playing a physical game. 

Another advantage that I particularly like about digital abstract games is the opportunity to play against different people. With the online play options it allows you to test your prowess against others from around the world, not just those in your regular gaming group.

The app includes additional ‘quests’, which I believe were originally introduced in the physical expansion Age of Giants. These quests include placing particular terrains next to your castle or in the corners of your kingdom, having terrains without crowns. Adding these quests really elevates Kingdomino: Digital Edition, giving different ways to seize victory. I’ve won some games by focusing on the quests, and others by ignoring the quests and focusing on the traditional scoring of terrains alone. Including the Harmony and Middle Kingdom quest tiles from the original board game, along with new quests unique to the app, is a nice touch.  

How does Kingdomino: Digital Edition compare to Kingdomino on Board Game Arena?

Compared to Board Game Arena (BGA), Kingdomino: Digital Edition is a massive step up both in terms of the visual elements and the intuitive user interface, but this does come at an additional cost. Kingdomino: Digital Edition is currently £4.99 and Board Game Arena is £4.50 per month for a premium account which will let you play Kingdomino as well as many other games. 

The other differences between the Digital Edition and BGA versions are: 

• Kingdomino: Digital Edition boasts more game modes (e.g. Pass & Play), whereas the BGA version has ‘real-time’ and ‘turn-based’. Whilst the latter is not typical for this type of digital adaptation, it would be a nice addition if Meeple Corp look into adding this. 

• I love the additional quests in the Digital Edition. You can play with the Harmony and Middle Kingdom quests on BGA (the ones from the physical expansion), but those are actually my least favourite quests to play with. Although interestingly, it doesn’t appear to let you turn off the quest cards in the Digital Edition. 

• The Digital Edition has specific achievements for you to complete and an ‘event’ style task where you spend game currency (earned by playing games) to chip away at the fog, revealing a lost kingdom. In contrast, Kingdomino on BGA has the standard BGA achievements used for any game (e.g. first win, or 3 wins etc). 

Final thoughts

This is a great digital adaptation and so far I prefer it to the real life version, mainly because it gives me the ability to play against different people (rather than just Lauren who would beat me every time – she’s a strategic genius [and totally didn’t sneak this in when editing]).

If Kingdomino is a game you see yourself playing regularly, there’s enough within the Digital Edition to warrant getting this version over (or as well as) the BGA version. That said, there’s nothing wrong with the BGA version, it just lacks a bit of the polish and quality-of-life updates that Kingdomino: Digital Edition offers.