How Dorfromantik Expands Its Cozy World Through Minimalist Design

Since its debut following Ludum Dare 46, Dorfromantik from Toukana Interactive has become one of the most recognizable examples of minimalist cozy game design, blending modular city-building systems, relaxing pacing, and highly readable visuals into an experience that feels simultaneously simple and deeply atmospheric.

What makes the game especially notable is how restrained much of its design philosophy remains even after years of updates, ports, and expansions. Rather than continuously layering new mechanics and complexity onto the core formula, the team at Toukana Interactive has focused heavily on refinement, visual cohesion, and preserving the clarity that originally made the game resonate with players.

In this interview, the developers discuss the core design pillars that shaped Dorfromantik from its earliest prototype phase, including minimalism, readability, and relaxation, while also breaking down how those principles continue influencing the game’s evolution years later through additions like the Medieval Biome Pack and Night Mode.

Dorfromantik has maintained a very distinct identity since its debut. How would you describe the core design philosophy that has guided the project over the years?

From the very beginning, minimalism has been at the core of Dorfromantik’s design philosophy. In part, that came out of necessity. We originally developed the game at university, with a very limited timeframe and funding that would only sustain us for about a year. That constraint forced us to focus on building something that worked exceptionally well at its core, without relying on a lot of additional systems or complexity.

Early on, we also defined a set of core design pillars that guided all of our decisions throughout development. These pillars acted as a constant checkpoint whenever we evaluated new ideas or features. Minimalism and relaxation were two of the key aspects, and overall, they helped us stay focused on what the game should feel like at its core. Whenever something new came up, we would always ask ourselves whether it aligned with these principles.In general, we were very strict about questioning every feature idea, both internally and from external suggestions. We kept asking: Does the game really need this? Does it actually improve the experience? Very often, despite thinking something would be cool, the answer was no. That discipline helped us avoid diluting the core experience and instead stay focused on refining what already worked.

Another important factor was that we had a very clear vision early on. The game started as a prototype during the Ludum Dare 46, and we were already very happy with how the core gameplay felt at that stage. That gave us the confidence that we didn’t need to completely reinvent or expand the foundation. We just needed to polish and improve it.

The same structured approach also applied to the visual identity. We created an art style sheet quite early in development, defining key aspects such as shapes, proportions, atmosphere, lighting, colors, textures, and perspective. We aimed for a style that is simple and minimalistic, but still slightly playful and warm, avoiding anything too rigid or overly detailed. A lot of the visuals are built from very basic shapes, but carefully composed. Having these guidelines helped us stay visually consistent and allowed us to regularly check whether we were still on the right path.

The upcoming Medieval Biome Pack (out on June 2) reimagines existing assets with a historical twist. What was the creative process behind translating Dorfromantik’s minimalist aesthetic into a medieval setting?

One of the reasons the medieval setting felt like such a natural fit is that Dorfromantik already had elements that subtly leaned in that direction. So for us, it felt like a great first step in exploring how the game be expanded further with additional content.

At the same time, we have a very clear guideline for Dorfromantik: We don’t want to overload the core system, because it already works very well. That means we usually operate within a defined framework of what’s already in the game. Instead of adding entirely new systems, we focus on reinterpreting existing elements like special tiles, unique buildings, and house types.

We had explored a similar approach before with the Sakura biome, where we translated the game into a Japanese-inspired setting and adapted all the building shapes accordingly. The Medieval Biome Pack follows a similar idea, but it’s actually quite a significant effort. It’s not just about changing colors or atmosphere. We’re reworking essentially all building models, and in some cases other objects as well, to fit the new theme.Creatively, this was a very exciting process. We spent a lot of time thinking about how certain structures might have looked several hundred years ago, and how to reinterpret them in a way that still fits Dorfromantik’s visual language.One of my favorite examples is the ruin tile. In the base game, it’s a decayed structure hidden in the forest. In the medieval setting, we flipped that idea and show it as a large castle in its prime. It gives players a small glimpse into the world’s past, almost like seeing what these places looked like before they fell into ruin.

We applied a similar idea to other elements as well. For example, the old, leafless tree from the base game becomes a vibrant, fully grown tree in the medieval version: Lush, decorated, and full of life. These kinds of transformations were especially fun, because they don’t just change the visuals, but also add a subtle narrative layer to the world.

Can you walk us through your art pipeline for creating new tiles and environments—from initial concept to final in-game implementation?

I usually begin with quick thumbnail sketches, just to block out a rough idea. Because our style relies on relatively simple geometry, we move into a 3D blockout phase quite early. This allows us to quickly test forms and see how they hold up in three dimensions. We also bring assets into Unity at a very early stage. There, we check proportions, readability, and how well the shapes work within the game environment. After that, we go back into Blender for further iteration and refinement. We take a lot of time tweaking the vertices to create a “perfect” shape, which we evaluate from different angles and especially from the slight top-down perspective the assets will be seen from in the game.

A key part of our pipeline is how we handle color. Instead of a traditional texturing workflow, we use a vertex color system in combination with grayscale albedo textures. In Blender the faces of each model are assigned to up to five vertex color channels: red, green, blue, yellow, and purple, which are used as color masks later in the engine. We try to stay within that limit for every asset, because we believe that more colors within a small asset would create too much noise. In Unity, these color channels are linked to biome-specific color sets, in which we handpick the colors. This means that each building can automatically adapt its appearance depending on the biome it’s placed in, without needing unique textures for every variation. It’s a very efficient way to ensure visual consistency while still allowing for a lot of variation. In addition to that, we generate outline textures (partly in Blender, partly in Substance Painter and some via fresnel masking in unity) as well as ambient occlusion maps. We also create a simple, hand-painted grayscale albedo map, usually done in Procreate.

All of these elements come together in the engine, where we define biome assets and assign color sets to each object. Every building effectively has a different configuration depending on the biome, which allows us to achieve smooth biome blending and maintain a cohesive color identity across the entire world.
For our second game Star Birds we have further developed and improved on this approach of coloring objects in-engine, resulting in lots of flexibilty and a very quick turnaround time per asset.

Dorfromantik’s visuals are deceptively simple but highly readable. What are the key principles you follow to maintain clarity while still achieving a rich, atmospheric look?

As mentioned above, minimalism is at the core of Dorfromantik and it’s something we constantly have to reinforce. When creating assets, there’s always a tendency to add more detail, but through a lot of iteration, we usually end up going back to simpler forms. What matters most is that the basic shape works. The silhouette needs to be clear and the asset has to read well from the in-game perspective. That’s always our primary benchmark.
In our studio we often use the sentence: “This is creating too much visual noise” That’s something we are really focused on here.

Color plays a huge role here as well. We spend a lot of time iterating on palettes, especially since biomes can blend into each other. To ensure readability, we regularly check everything in grayscale to validate the value structure. That’s the foundation. Readability through value and then add atmosphere and emotion through hue and saturation.

With the Medieval Biome Pack, we allowed slightly more detail in some areas, but without breaking the overall visual language. The new assets still blend seamlessly with the base game. In the end, it’s always about balancing clarity and mood: the game needs to be easy to read, while still feeling warm, calm, and inviting. However, as more biomes are added, maintaining that balance becomes more complex, since all of them need to fit together harmoniously.

From a technical standpoint, how is lighting handled in Dorfromantik, and what changes were required to support Night Mode?

From a technical standpoint, lighting doesn’t play a major role in Dorfromantik. We use a single main sunlight in the scene, which remains largely unchanged apart from lifting the darkness of shadows, along with a very subtle fog that adds a bit of mood depending on the biome.

Where lighting really comes into play is in how we think about and design color. As mentioned before, we carefully handcraft the color palettes for each biome, and during that process we think a lot about lighting, almost as if we were painting an image. Instead of relying on complex lighting systems, we use color to define the overall mood and atmosphere.

In that sense, lighting becomes more of an artistic tool than a technical one. The way we choose and combine colors essentially determines how the scene feels and reads.

This approach also made implementing Night Mode relatively straightforward. We didn’t need to fundamentally change the lighting setup. Instead, we treated it like an additional biome. By adjusting the color sets for all elements in the scene, we were able to shift the entire mood. It’s almost like repainting the world of Dorfromantik in a different atmosphere, rather than re-lighting it in a traditional sense.

Over the years, the game has expanded across multiple platforms, including Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox. How has that influenced your development pipeline and technical decisions?

We’re very happy that we’ve been able to bring Dorfromantik to so many platforms. We handled the Switch port ourselves, shortly after the 1.0 release on PC, while the Xbox and PlayStation versions came much later and were developed in collaboration with German Publisher HeadUp, who took care of the porting process.

Overall, this hasn’t significantly changed our core workflow. We still see PC as our main platform and develop the game primarily with that in mind. However, when we work on new content now, we already think about how it will translate to other platforms. We stay in close communication with our partners and try to ensure that everything we create can be adapted smoothly across all versions of the game.

As a relatively small team, how do you structure production and collaboration across disciplines like design, art, and engineering?

Our team structure has evolved quite a bit over the course of Dorfromantik’s development. We originally started as a group of four at university, and have since grown into a studio of nine people. In the beginning, Dorfromantik was our main focus. Over time, that shifted as we started working on new projects like the Dorfromantik boardgames or our new game Star Birds, which now take up most of the team’s capacity. As a result, Dorfromantik has become more of a side project, handled by single team members who are already very familiar with it. In a way, this also serves as a test for us as a team. Exploring whether this kind of smaller, more independent production setup works well. If it does, we could definitely see ourselves continuing to develop future Dorfromantik content in similar, more compact team structures.

What tools and software are central to your workflow for building Dorfromantik—both for art creation and in-engine development?

Our main tools are Unity and Blender. Blender is primarily used for 3D modeling and animation, while Unity is where everything comes together. For texturing and concepts, we use Procreate and Substance Painter. We also use miro as a collaborative mood-board and art iteration platform. Inside Unity, we rely heavily on custom-built tools. We use add-ons like Odin to create custom inspector tools, which allow our artists to define color schemes and tweak parameters of game objects directly within the inspector, not having to touch code. For the actual shading of objects we create custom shaders with shader graph.

That said, Dorfromantik originally started development in 2020, and a lot has changed since then. Right now, we’re actively evaluating to what extent it makes sense to evolve or update our toolset going forward.

Dorfromantik balances procedural generation with handcrafted design. How do you approach building and maintaining that system to ensure both variety and cohesion?

A lot of Dorfromantik’s underlying structure is driven by systems. But at the same time, we’ve built in many points of control where we can make deliberate, hands-on decisions, such as defining color palettes or selecting and designing specific assets.

It was always important for us to retain a strong level of artistic control and not rely too heavily on randomness. Because of that, Dorfromantik is less of a fully procedural system and more of a modular one. We create and curate every tile that’s added and the system recombines them within a set of rules to generate variety while still feeling cohesive.

At this point, the system is very well established, and we’re quite careful about making major changes to it. There’s a risk that altering the balance too much could negatively affect the overall experience and already achieved highscores and ranks for players. Instead of expanding the system further from a mechanical standpoint, we focus more on introducing visual variety and exploring new ideas on the artistic side for now.

Looking back at five years of development and updates, what were the most important lessons learned about maintaining and evolving a live product?

Over the years, we’ve gone through several distinct phases as a team. In the beginning, we were honestly overwhelmed by how well Dorfromantik was received. The amount of support, feedback, and attention was far beyond what we expected. At the same time, that also came with a lot of requests and expectations from the community, which we first had to learn how to navigate.

Finding the right balance there was an important step for us. We developed a clearer way of communicating what we wanted the game to be and just as importantly, what we didn’t want it to become. That meant carefully selecting which related projects to look into (the boardgames for example) which feedback to incorporate, and also learning to say no when something didn’t align with the core experience.

At a certain point, we also reached a phase where we felt a bit burned out on Dorfromantik. The workflow had become quite repetitive, and creatively, we needed some distance. That’s when we shifted our focus to new projects and explored different ideas.Interestingly, that break also helped us appreciate Dorfromantik in a new way. We saw how many players were still engaged with the game, even years later, and how much it still meant to people. That gave us renewed motivation to return to it.Now, we’re in a place where we’re excited to work on the game again and give something back to the community. We’re looking forward to continuing its development and exploring what else we can do with it.

Finally, what can players and developers expect next, from both the Medieval Biome Pack and Dorfromantik’s future evolution?

With the Medieval Biome Pack, players can experience Dorfromantik in a completely new setting, featuring a full architectural redesign. The pack introduces three distinct biomes: Medieval summer, autumn, and winter, which can be played individually or mixed with existing biomes to create new variations and atmospheres.

Looking ahead, this release also serves as a way for us to explore how players respond to this type of content. If the community likes it, we can totally imagine expanding Dorfromantik further with additional biome packs in the future.

We’re also updating the main game with a free update for all, the so-called “Night Mode” which is essentially a dark mode biome people can switch on as an overlay. Another QoL feature we’re adding are fully integrated leaderboards in the main menu.At the same time, we’re working with partners on a dedicated mobile version of Dorfromantik. This version has been specifically designed for mobile devices, offering new surprising ways to play, while staying true to the core experience of the game.

Beyond that, we’re also continuing to expand the Dorfromantik universe in other directions, including new board game projects. We are indeed very excited to see where things go from here!

Toukana Interactive, Dorfromantik Developer