In Joy Kingdom, benefiting the Humane Society of the United States, Best Friends Animal Society, and Farm Sanctuary, players help Amani, King of the Animal Spirits, rebuild the animal kingdom after its "joy" is stolen away by shadows. As players work together, they earn joy as a currency, and are able to contribute to their charity of choice to fund real-world projects.

The basic gameplay is Joy Kingdom is fairly conventional. Through purchasing structures, building and farming, players will earn various resources with which they can continue to unlock additional items. The eventual aim is to clean up the tainted land of all the "shadowy" creatures and plants, and bring joy back to the land.

The main focus of the game is generating the Joy resource in order to provide help to the various real-world projects. Choosing to help a real-world project means that the player must place a “spirit animal” representing the project in their game world, and when they have collected enough Joy they may feed it to the animal to help increase the amount of support that project will get.