Bring House of the Dragon to phones. The game is set during the Targaryen civil war, 172 years before Daenerys, and players are new dragonriders fighting their way toward King’s Landing. The art had to feel true to HBO’s world, stay readable on a small screen across a huge strategy map, and support years of live-service content.
Case study 01
Game of Thrones: Dragonfire
- AAA mobile 4X strategy game for iOS and Android, built in Unity
- Team of 20+ artists, globally distributed
- Led art from concept through soft launch
Official launch video
The challenge
My role
I was the first artist to join the team, along with the Creative Director and Head of Product. Our experience and research told us that it was possible to bring Game of Thrones fans to strategy gaming – the studio’s current game, Game of Thrones: Conquest had already done it, even after the eight-season series ended. Given the coming release of House of the Dragon, our hypothesis was that building a new game that appealed to a broader base of those same fans had a strong chance of success.
Spoiler alert – the look we built carried through to a worldwide launch in June 2026, and by October players had spent an estimated $23 million in the game (AppMagic via PocketGamer.biz).
Our North Star, as we often put it, was “to create a living, breathing Westeros,” and I worked daily with engineering, design, product and production on the trade-offs that required.
What I did
- Found the look. With the support of my teammates, I defined the game’s visual style and established exemplar assets that showed the growing team the high bar for quality we needed to reach. Early on, I directed several outsource partners and individual artists through more than 20 style explorations, from watercolor and graphic novel to cartoon, realism and stylized realism. I had my favorites, but testing showed players wanted it as realistic as we could make it. So we landed on a look that skews toward realism and is stylized on purpose: simplified where it can be, detailed where it matters.
- Brought the show’s dragons into the game. When we started, we hadn’t seen the show yet, and we didn’t know what its dragons looked like. I reached out to HBO Visual Effects and found like-minded people there who wanted to help, and we were careful not to add to their load during live production. Their film-resolution models and textures were far heavier than games usually take on, so I helped set up a remote desktop with an Nvidia A1000 GPU that could open them. I reviewed sets like Dragonstone and King’s Landing in Unreal Engine, so we could bring the assets into the game without losing what made them authentic.
- Built the world. There were 28 dragons at launch, including the show’s Caraxes, Syrax, Vhagar, Sunfyre and Seasmoke plus original designs, in four breeds with distinct silhouettes, growing from egg to adult. The map runs from snowy northern mountains to southern deserts, with landmarks like the Red Keep, Dragonstone and Harrenhal.
- Built the team. I hired and led a distributed team of 20+ artists, with direction and reviews across concept, 3D, UI and VFX.
- Directed outside partners. I directed the launch trailer on this page with our creative partner, Plastic Wax, and kept vendors at our quality bar.
- Explored new workflows. I set up a GenAI sandbox to test new tools, teach stakeholders about them and find real uses in production.
- Took it to soft launch. As the game moved from production into live service, I transitioned my responsibilities to the team that would carry it forward.
Results
As of October 2026
- 4.8 stars from about 17,000 ratings on the App Store and 4.5 stars from about 40,000 reviews on Google Play, with 1M+ downloads on Google Play.
- ScreenRant said the game “has taken dragon creation and lore to the next level,” calling it “worth checking out if not just to see these distinct and incredible designs alone” (ScreenRant).
- Still live, with new campaigns every eight weeks or so and plans to expand into the wider Game of Thrones world (PocketGamer.biz).
Art from the game
Finding the look
I commissioned and directed over 20 style explorations from outsource partners and individual artists. Many points of view were represented. Ultimately the fans spoke. When we asked their opinion, they clearly preferred the most realistic of them. We achieved a look that feels consistent and coherent, a somewhat stylized realism that works within the constraints of the platform and gives the world the room it needs to grow over time.
Dragons
Dragon design came in stages. With no early word from the show on its dragons, we focused first on the game’s overall look. Once the show’s publicity revealed how varied they would be, the dragon work began in earnest.
Characters
World and UI
Official site: gotdragonfire.com. Background images: Game of Thrones: Dragonfire key art and official trailer and dev diary frames © Warner Bros. Games / HBO.