DRAGON: A Game About a Dragon Review

Some dragons would rather watch TV than watch the world burn!

Now that dragon season is in full effect thanks to new episodes of Game of Thrones, it's the perfect time to release Dragon: A Game About a Dragon. If you can't tell by the game's title, this tongue-in-cheek adventure doesn't focus on the typical “dragon scorches the Earth and every living thing in its path” type of dragon. No, the star of this game is more like a stoner dragon who's torn away from watching talk shows to participate in a real-life quest. Nearly every aspect of this game feels familiar, but it still manages to forge its own fiery path of lighthearted destruction.

As the drama unfolds, the aptly-named Dragon is immediately roused from his favorite spot—that is, the comfy chair in front of the TV—by the King's guards. These unwelcome intruders rush upstairs, grab Dragon's human girlfriend, and cart her off to the castle as a prisoner. Don't you just hate when that happens?

No, seriously, don't you hate when the same old worn-out damsel-in-distress plot with a slightly different twist is introduced as a clever alternative? With this kind of predictable plot, I expect the next “reveal” is that the King turns out to be Dragon's long lost brother. Anyway, now Dragon is forced to explore every inch of the kingdom in search of magical orbs that will allow him to enter the King's lair and save his girlfriend.

This is the first game I've played that looks more like a kid's scrapbook than real life. These colored pencil-style visuals wouldn't suit a serious adventure, but they're ideal for a game that doesn't take itself seriously. Everything from the cute protagonist to the adorable life bar to the non-menacing enemies makes me feel like I've actually entered the mind of a pre-teen who longs to become a game designer. These visuals are sickeningly adorable, so they definitely won't appeal to the machismo in anyone. However, they're a very welcome change from the uber-realism that most game developers strive to achieve.

Even the world map evokes a childlike whimsy that reminds me of old Zelda games. While the levels themselves are mostly linear, players can choose either to follow the next story level or to tackle non-story levels to gain experience and find loot. Although this adds variety, it would be cool if the difficulty of levels in the same “cluster” were more balanced. I also feel like the “boss” fights are much more challenging than the levels that lead up to them. This is made unnecessarily frustrating by hitboxes on the bosses that are much larger than the bosses themselves. For instance, I jumped over one boss who was a couple of inches from the corner of the screen. However, when I got to his backside, I was still taking damage as if I was standing on top of him.

Boss fights aside, the general gameplay focuses on platforming and minor combat, which is fun and rewarding. It's cool to explore levels as Dragon and cause major damage with his vicious claws (“it's just a flesh wound”) and deadly breath. There are lots of loot to find that increases various attributes, and Dragon can also upgrade his health, attack power, and flight ability with gold earned along the way. Upgrades are a good incentive to continue, but they don't seem to affect gameplay very much.

However, I do like how Dragon can find new types of damaging breath that has different effects on enemies. For instance, the same enemies that are immune to fire breath take major damage from electrical breath. It's also possible to unlock new areas of certain levels with different types of breath.

My major complaint about this game lies in the severe limitations when it comes to customizing the controls. This doesn't affect anyone who wants to play with a controller, but it's maddening to most people who use a keyboard. Notice I didn't write “mouse,” because there is no mouse support. It's also not possible to use any of the NumKeys or the six keys above the arrow keys (Ins, Home, Page up/Down, Del, End). As a result, I was forced to use WASD for movement (which I hate) and choose random keys for other actions. In this day and age, any game that forces players to learn a new control scheme is immediately alienating a large part of the gaming population. Dragon: A Game About a Dragon isn't innovative, and it certainly won't win any awards, but it's still a fun adventure filled with offbeat humor and childlike charm.