Early on, the idea of playing against Magnus had been decided upon. The same goes for the concept of choosing between Magnus’ ages to set the difficulty of each game. To create a chess engine that was tuned to play exactly like Magnus, we knew we had to work with someone with specific knowledge and experience with chess engines in apps. And so Tord Romstad, one of the developers of the popular Stockfish chess engine, joined us.
To further incorporate Magnus into the game, I came up with the concept of incorporating his personality using principles of emotional design. Just as our chess engine was custom built and made to play like Magnus, the visual look & feel as well as the personality of the app was made to mirror that of Magnus. A bold and elegant visual language was created to build the brand of the Chess Champion into the whole experience — in everything from the visuals, the illustrations, the style of photography to the tone of voice.