Once upon a time, there was a little kingdom, built on three simple joys: shaping a land, watching it fill with life, and caring for the people who called it home.

The painter painted, and the kingdom answered

Where the painter laid rock, mountains rose and caught snow, and rivers found their own way down, tipping over cliffs as waterfalls. Every tile looked at its neighbours and decided what to become. Even the painter could be surprised.

• When a lonely house was ringed with road, it became a church with a belfry and a spire.

• When a house was surrounded by fields, it became a windmill, and its sails turned in the wind.

• When the painter kept painting, the village got ideas above its station and grew a castle, with round towers in pointy hats.

The boats sailed in, and the houses filled

Then a dock was built by the open sea, and the first boats arrived. Villagers stepped ashore with their suitcases, walked the roads to their new front doors, and smoke rose from the chimneys. Ask what they were up to and they'd tell you: “Gone fishing.” “Milling merrily.” “Doorstep dawdling.” One was carrying a sheep and saw no need to explain.

The painter cared, and the country grew

“Bridge, please!” called one villager. “Work wanted!” said another. The painter listened: a bridge here, a mine there, a cottage with a view worth waking up to. Word got around that this was a happy place. More boats came, roads widened under all those footsteps, and the quiet hamlet grew taller and taller until it was a kingdom.

Nothing was hurried, and nothing was lost

• No clock and no failure. The worst a painter could do was paint a lake under a crowd, who cartwheeled away crying “Falling! Mercy!” and swam off to find a new home. Even that could be undone.

• A finished kingdom could try on 42 colour looks, then be folded into a short text code and sent to a friend like a letter.

The painter shaped a land, settled a people, and tended a kingdom of their own. And all along, the painter was you.

Created by Michał Marcinkowski, maker of Soldat and King Arthur’s Gold.

Inspired by Neuschwanstein castle, and by Tiny Glade, Townscaper and Islandoodle - the works of Anastasia Opara, Tomasz Stachowiak, Oskar Stålberg and Matt Stark.