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Draw nations on maps, then use cards to expand, split, and reshape them as you build your own alternate history.
Released 30 May 2025
Draw Nations on Maps
Split Nations
Annex Neighboring Nations
Doodle Empires is an alternate history sandbox game all about drawing your own nations with your own histories and stories in a variety of maps. Watch your world take shape and evolve over time, and decide which nations will rise and which nations will fall.
Developed by Turtle Stack Games · Published by Turtle Stack Games
Create a nation by choosing its border color and name, then draw its territory onto one of the available maps. Your drawing power limits how much land you can mark at a time, and you can create additional nations as your world grows.
Select a nation and draw cards to change its borders and identity. Expand cards add territory, split cards carve out a new nation, and a union card lets one nation annex another. Other cards can create nations, change leaders, establish or adopt religions, and create new origins.
Castles protect nearby tiles by making them harder for other nations to claim. Political, origin, faith, and fort map modes show different aspects of your world, while age cards change which actions appear more often over time.
Players who enjoy maps, alternate history, and imaginative worldbuilding appreciate drawing their own nations and using random cards to spark unexpected stories. Some also value the game's simple, relaxed approach, while others find the limited mechanics repetitive or wanted a more autonomous simulation.
Doodle Empires is an alternate history sandbox game all about drawing your own nations with your own histories and stories in a variety of maps. Watch your world take shape and evolve over time, and decide which nations will rise and which nations will fall.
1. Create your first nation by selecting a border color and typing up a name
2. Draw the borders of your new nation onto the map, while paying attention to how much drawing power you have left at the top
3. Once out of drawing power, click a nation to open the nation inspector, and hit the select button.
4. Draw a new card on the top right, which will allow you to alter the selected nation further
5. Repeat
EXPAND: There are three expand card types, which are small, medium and large expand, and they allow you to grow the borders of your selected nation.
NOTE: Expanding into unclaimed territory will be much cheaper than trying to expand into the land of other nations
SPLIT: There are two split card types, which are the regular split and the small split, and both will cause you to carve out a new nation out of a portion of whatever nation you selected bfore drawing the card
UNION: The union card allows your selected nation to fully annex another nation as if part of a royal union or similar treaty
NEW NATION: The new nation card will allow you to create a new nation just as you did at the start of the game, which will allow you to make a whole new Origin Group
NEW LEADER: The new leader card will switch out the currently selected nation's leader with a new one with new traits, which will affect how that nation expands its territory
BUILD CASTLE: The build castle card allows players to place and name a castle into the territory of the selected nation, which will then protect the tiles surrounding the castle, and thus make it more costly for other nations to take it
FOUND/ADOPT RELIGION: These cards will allow you to create new faiths, or adopt an already existing faith.
DIVERGE ORIGIN: This card will create a whole new origin from the selected nation
AGE CARDS: The age of conquest, division and unity cards will all make different cards more common over a period of time
Political Mode: This mode allows players to see the borders of all nations on the map
Origin Mode: This mode allows players to see the original nation each nation split off from. Think of it as a sort of culture group map. NOTE: A nation's origin can also be seen in its nation inspector
Faith Mode: This mode allows players to see what tiles are part of what faith
Fort Mode: This mode allows players to see what tiles are currently protected by castles, and therefore more difficult to expand into
Doodle Empires is still early in development, and there is a lot I still want to add and expand on
Future mechanics and updates I'd like to add include:
Creating tribes, which can migrate and eventually settle
Disaster cards that will cause nations to lose land to the wilderness
A lot of quality of life additions such as, map sizes, list of dead nations, UI design, music/sound, etc.
Much more to come
Much like the nations in Doodle Empires, this list is subject to grow and change over time as I continue development, but should give you an idea of what I hope to build here.
My name is Tanner/TanTan, and I'm working on this project on my own. I've been playing historical map strategy games since I was in middle school, and would occasionally like to draw on maps using the paint app on my computer. I've seen people similarly do the same using a spinning wheel with names of countries, events that happen, etc. That gave me the idea that instead of just winging it on paint like we've been doing I could make it into a real game with a bunch of possibilities and the freedom to make the world you like with some added randomness from drawing cards. Anyway, thank you to anyone who decides to try my game, and follow my progress as I continue to develop Doodle Empires into a full game
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux |
|---|---|
| Steam Deck | Playable |
| Age ratings |
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| Controller required | No |
