As part of our visit to the ngmoco offices last week we got to try out a couple of new games that will be coming to Android soon. The first was Skyfall and the second is a neat strategy game called DragonCraft. This new game is in the late Alpha/early Beta stages of development but already looks pretty promising from what we saw.
DragonCraft will be a free-to-play strategy game where you will be fighting over the control of Terra Vale which used to be controlled by one king until some massive event happened where the land ended up being split up into 12 different “Baronies” which are run by different Dragon Riders. You will be trying to convince them to join you and become part of your “Barony” until you have control over all of them and become the ruler of Terra Vale.
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The play style of this title is pretty interesting. You will start off with a small village that you will have to build up in order to become stronger and have bigger armies and better technology. It is similar in style to games like Age of Empires in regards to building your village up, constructing new building and researching new technology. You will also be gathering resources such as gold or Dragon Crystals which is the source of magic in Terra Vale. This happens also while you are logged out of the game which means you are still gather resources while you are at work or sleeping.
For an early build of the game, it’s already got a lot of content in it with 25 areas across the 12 Baronies. This isn’t just your typical build-up-a-castle-and-take-everyone-over type of game either. You’ll have quests and achievements to get which will reward you with more resources and money. This also helps you level up your troops as well as most quests deal with combat in some fashion. DragonCraft will have 12 buildings that you can construct, each with three levels of upgrades when the game is launched. More is planned as well in future updates.
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There will also be 18 troop types you will be able to create across 6 different disciplines at launch. The disciplines are essentially troop classes like archers, soldiers and magic users. Each of those will be able to level up through combat and become more powerful to the point that your troops will also start using magic in their attacks. This does come at a price though and some troops can get addicted to Dragon Crystals which can have side effects.
Combat can be done in two ways: Quick Skirmishes and more draw out battle sequences where you can watch your troops and the enemy troops battle it out. Quick Skirmishes are done by just tapping on the enemy unit on the map and tapping on the battle button.
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Dragons play a big role in this game as well, in case the name didn’t give that away. You can breed dragons but collecting dragon scales. Once you have 5 scales you can form a dragon egg which you then hatch and grow your dragons. Dragons can be used in battles and are very powerful, especially when they get higher up in level. There are five levels in total with a special 6th level as well which the developers are still working on. We got to see a preview of this 6th level dragon which happened to be named “Totally Fucking Ripped Swamp Dragon”. There will also be special events held in game, some of which will deal with capturing dragons.
There isn’t an exact release date yet for DragonCraft as it is still under development but the game does look promising already. Hopefully there will be some sort of multiplayer game play brought into it before it’s released because as it stands right now, it is only a single player game.
