King of Puzzles

Lay the land. Only your biggest patch counts. King of Kingdoms is a quiet puzzle about building a kingdom out of dominoes. There's no clock and nothing chasing you - just a board, a handful of pieces, and the slow problem of where they should go. How it plays Your kingdom starts as a single castle in the middle of a 7x7 grid. Over 24 rounds you're offered three pieces at a time and take one of them: a two-square domino, or a single upgrade square carrying a big number. Turn it whichever way you like and set it down anywhere it touches what you've already built. The kingdom grows outwards from there. The scoring is the whole game. There are six kinds of land - wheat, water, mountains, swamps, forest and plains - and each scores on its own. But only your single biggest connected patch of a terrain counts for anything at all, and it scores its number of squares multiplied by the total value sitting inside it. So a sprawling forest with no numbers in it is worth nothing at all. One square with a big number on it is worth almost nothing. You spend the whole game doing two things at once: keeping a patch growing, and getting value into it - while the pieces you're offered quietly decline to cooperate. Got two decent patches of the same land? Only the bigger one pays out. That's the ache, and it's most of the game. A board whenever you want one - Pull a fresh random puzzle any time - no waiting for tomorrow - Every board has a code, so you can hand one to somebody and compare - Every board you've ever played is kept, sorted by how you placed on it - Leaderboards for every board, filterable to just your friends The daily - A new board every day, the same one for everybody in the world - Only your first run counts, so there's no grinding a board for a better number - Replay it as much as you like afterwards - practice runs are shown to you and to nobody else - A daily leaderboard, and a streak for turning up King of Daily Kingdoms Every week is a season, and it resets on Monday. Your week is your best five days out of seven, so missing a day won't sink you, but turning up regularly still counts for something. Sit top of the table when the week ends and the title is yours. King of Kingdoms The crown is the long game. You hold a crown for every board you're top of - but only boards somebody else has played too, because being alone at the top of a board isn't beating anyone. Whoever holds the most crowns is King of Kingdoms, and their name sits on the front of the game for everybody else to see. It moves. Somebody beats your score on a board you led, and that crown is gone. Challenge your friends Send anyone a board you've played along with the score to beat. They'll find it waiting next time they play, and it clears for both of you once it's answered. It's also the fastest way to turn a board you already lead into a crown.