2017 'Game of the Year' Kingdomino finds its Queendomino this October

This year’s winner of the lauded Spiel des Jahres ‘Game of the Year’ prize is getting an expansion and standalone sequel this autumn.

Kingdomino, designed by Bruno Cathala, is a light spin on – yes – dominoes, with players building up their kingdom by drafting new tiles and connecting them to matching regions in their five-by-five grid, which they can then lock down using crowns for extra points.

Its follow-up, fittingly titled Queendomino, is both an expansion to the original and a standalone game that can be played independently.

The new box introduces slightly more complex puzzles, keeping the tile selection and placement gameplay unchanged but adding in an extra colour to represent cities. City tiles do not have a crown and do not earn extra victory points, but can be used to generate income to fund special buildings to boost that player’s score.

“Queendomino will be one step more complicated than Kingdomino,” Cathala wrote in a BoardGameGeek forum. “It will not become a game for experts, but yes, there will be a step in complexity. Why? Just because Queendomino is exactly the game I wanted to play myself after having played hundreds of Kingdomino games.”

The standalone game will support two to four players using five-by-five grids, or can be combined with Kingdomino to support seven-by-seven grids for four people, or up to six players using the standard area size.

Queendomino is due to debut at this year’s Essen Spiel fair in October.