Pros: Lots of dragons to unlock, good graphics
Cons: Facebook requirement, long build/breed times, not many features
Gameplay: 5
Graphics: 8
Performance: 8
Overall: 7
We recently checked out Kinderdragons from R2Games, a free to play dragon breeding MMO where you get to build up a team of dragon pets and fight against other players; as you have to construct different types of buildings it becomes somewhat a city building MMO meets Pokémon mashup. The game is only accessible through Facebook and so jumping in with our new account we played for a little while to get the gist of the game, check out the available features and get a good idea of what Kinderdragon is all about.
The general premise is that we started with our own floating island, essentially like blank farmland that we could construct various buildings on such as Incubators to breed dragons, Hatcheries to hatch eggs, Nests to hold our dragons and Farms to grow food to feed our dragons and level them up. When we say “various buildings” that really was pretty much the extent of it; there were larger variations and a handful of specialist buildings and an even smaller handful of cosmetic decorations, but there wasn’t a wide selection of buildings to choose from.
Throughout the duration of our game we had NPCs giving us quests guiding us on what to build and what tasks to do and in which order; given the level restrictions of buildings and features, the resource requirements, the time taken to build/breed/hatch and the minimal number of premium Gems currency handed out to rush these processes the experience didn’t allow for much flexibility and we kind of had to complete tasks in the order given to us to keep playing.
One of the things we did enjoy about the game was the variation of dragons you could breed; starting with the staple four dragon types (Fire, Plant, Water and Rock) we were able to breed them in different combinations, breeding a Water Dragon with a Fire Dragon would yield the egg of a Cloud Dragon; after being put in the Hatchery it would hatch into a new baby dragon. We could, alternatively, buy dragon eggs directly from the store but other than the basic four all eggs which could be purchased with Gold, all the others required premium Gem currency (and a lot of them). There are dozens of different dragons to try and breed, which was a pretty decent element, it was just a shame that there was no surprise to your creations and what cross breeding might create as all the eggs could be purchased and therefore you kind of knew already what you were going to get.
Premium currency trickled in and out of our possession, mostly being given to use from levelling up and possibly some quests, but to get through the early stages we had to spend that to rush breeding and hatching; which would take around three hours EACH; so from breeding to finally getting your new dragon it would take about 6 hours without premium currency. The restrictions on accessible features due to our level, combined with the long queue times that started appearing, we got to a point a lot earlier than we anticipated where we were essentially locked out of doing anything else in the game and just had to quit.
At around level 7 we had unlocked our first PVP mode and decided to give it a try, the Combat mode was Tournament and we could earn gold coins and 2 Gems if we won a fight, which looked promising and looked like a way to get passed the blocks due to everything being locked out with build times. After a few issues where it wouldn’t actually let us fight and just kept giving us a generic error popup, we finally got a match. We had to choose three of our dragons to take into battle and would then be paired up against a random player; combat was completely automated and over in a few seconds as our dragons attacked back and forth. We managed to win, got our gems, then tried to jump back in for another fight and were hit with the 12 HOUR wait until it refreshed and let us play again. Now we’re all for content that provides premium currency having longer cooldowns so that players don’t grind it, but given that it was our first/only PVP option then it feels like a better alternative would have been to not have that mode giving premium currency, or making a clone of the mode, one with premium currency and long cooldown and the other a more standard but perhaps even a limited number of tries?
The reality is that from this point our game had totally stalled out. We didn’t have enough currency to build, our Incubator and Hatchery already had dragons and eggs in them and we were waiting for 3 hours a piece for them to finish, we didn’t have Gems to rush any quests and the PVP was locked out for 12 hours. There was absolutely nothing to do, and so we had to log off.
The game looks good, the graphics for the most part are cute, colourful and are decent for a Facebook game. The mechanics and features are pretty basic, the gameplay is a little repetitive and very soon you’re doing the same quests over and over. Once the early Gems run out and the timers start kicking in then it’s time to log out. Whilst it’s fine having a game that is casual it would still be nice if there was something you could work on, being completely unable to play is kind of frustrating.
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