Black Queen is coming to Android, and we built it properly
You asked for Black Queen on your phone. The website already works in a mobile browser, so the quick answer would have been to wrap it in an app and call it done. We did that first. Then we threw it away and built a real Android app from scratch. Here is why, and how.
Why not just wrap the website?
Our first Android build was exactly that: the website inside a thin app shell. It worked, but it had three problems:
- It depends on your phone's browser engine. If that is old or out of date, things look slightly off. We saw this ourselves in testing.
- It uses more memory. The wrapped version used about 85 MB. The native one uses about 50 MB, so the game is less likely to be pushed out of memory while you take a call.
- It never feels quite native. Back gestures, vibration and the keyboard all behave a little differently inside a web page.
So we wrote the game screen again in Kotlin, Android's own language, using Jetpack Compose.
What stayed the same
The game itself. Rooms, bidding, trump, bots, daily deals, invite links: all of it still runs on the same server as the website. That means you can play with friends on the web and Android in the same room, and rules can never drift apart between the two.
What is better on Android
- A small download. The installed app is about 1.5 MB. The Play Store bundle is under 3 MB.
- Fast start. About a second and a half to a usable screen.
- Real haptics and sound. A short buzz when it is your turn and when you throw a card, with sound effects made for the game.
- Throw cards the natural way. Drag a card up, or flick it, to play it. Only legal cards are enabled.
- Invite links open the app. Tap a link from a friend and you land straight in their room.
- Private by default. Screenshots are blocked while you play, so hidden cards stay hidden. We do not need an account, and we do not track you.
How we made it look like the website
We did not want a different game. We took the website's styles and rebuilt each piece: card sizes, fonts, the green felt, the gold glow around your cards, the seat labels, and the little animations when a trick is won. Compose has no "box-shadow", so the glows are drawn by hand. One trick was caching the static felt background, so it is drawn once instead of 60 times a second.
The latest change is the cards. The ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ symbols used to come from your phone's fonts, which differ between manufacturers. Now the app draws each suit as a vector shape. They are sharp at every size and look the same on every phone.
What we are still working on
We would rather be honest than just say "faster and better":
- Battery. We have not yet measured it on a real phone. The animations are heavier than they should be, and we are reducing them.
- Real-device testing. Most of our testing was on an emulator. If you play on Android, tell us how it feels.
- Coming next: your stats and badges, notifications when it is your turn, and a better tablet layout.
Try it
The app is in closed testing on Google Play. Want to be a tester? Send us your Google account email. The web version stays free and fully supported, so nothing changes if you prefer it.
Black Queen Games