Friday, April 24, 2015

Dragon: A Game About A Dragon

I love good side-scrolling RPGs - from the hectic ones where guns and enemies are flying all over the screen, to the more casual ones that let me take in the artwork and the music, with some fun mechanics thrown in.

Dragon, by Games With Dragons In, definitely falls into the latter category, and was a perfect way to wind down after a stressful week of power outages, bad weather, and deadlines.


The premise is clever enough: The King has kidnapped Dragon's girlfriend, and now Dragon must travel through the land, taking on minions of the kingdom, wizards, and other contraptions in order to save his one true love (and take the occasional smoke break). There are power-ups throughout the game to enhance your flight ability (dragons have wings) and different breath weapons (because you are a dragon, after all).

The artwork is what made me eager to play this game before it was released - it's has a very hand-crafted feel, done in the style of crayon drawings, and the corners of the screen are turned like pages in the book, as you go through the narrative (which is very entertaining, and has the ability to laugh at gaming tropes without pulling you out of the overall experience).

I love games, but I'm terrible at playing them

In short, if you loved the pacing of some of the 16-bit era platformers, with a unique aesthetic and a soundtrack that completes the gameplay and pacing perfectly, then you should get this game. The game is pretty straight forward and forgiving about letting you try to do things, and which paths to take on the screen, but for $5.99 (USD) on Steam I can't think of a better way to spend you gaming money.

Also, this is a very independent production, with a quality that surpasses a LOT of the "retro-looking, procedurally-generated" stuff we're hit with on a weekly basis. Dragon is a really fun game that doesn't try to be anything more than it presents: A fun side-scrolling RPG (Dragon has stats, and you can level up) with a fun, hand-crafted look, and plenty of places to soak in the look and sounds of the game while enjoying whatever vices you prefer while rescuing your true love from a wicked king.

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