While I can find no evidence that I have played this game before. I do feel like I have played it in recent years. It might just be that I've seen the art style used before. Or that it has dragons in it.

I like dragons >:^.=.^:< so decided to play it regardless.

This game is like late night twitter, mixed with children's drawings, and old 8 bit games that did not care about difficulty levels vs the controls.

The basic plot is that you are mooching off your human mate. Lounging around, watching TV, and not being all dragony as a creature of your calibre should be.

Then for some reason the King kidnaps your girl, uses four McGuffin to protect his castle, and generally is a total evil arse. So off you go, on a quest to save the game's effective princess. So you can get back to TV. On the way you'll encounter the king's various useless minions, militant sheepies, 1-hit kill hazards, and several bosses.

Though it has a level of self awareness at how overused all these plot hooks are used, the flipping of Dragon as the good guy and the King's evil eyebrows and orb clutching are rather amusing.

There's several option story cutscenes you can view as the game progresses. And it feels like a mash of dodgy fanfic, and late night IRC absurdness. For some reason this is not bad, and strongly reminds me of the 1990s on AUSnet and DALnet where various people would just build out a total BS story.

In 'Dragon' the levels themselves can mostly be completed in under a minute and there is a lot of art that has been generated for them. Is it simplistic? Yes. But there's an obvious effort in all of it that does not make it feel rushed despite the childish look to it.

Unfortunately this can cause some issues. Occasionally it can be hard to tell a platform from a background element, and sometimes enemies are obscured by foreground elements. The short levels mean that you can learn the quirks they have rather fast but the lack of depth and definition on some components can cause you to have to restart them a few times before you do learn it.

The overworld map also confused me at first as the first level outside your house was not showing up. Or was not obvious: Once I explored the house a few times I realised that there was a -tiny] movement on the main map where I could select the first actual level that servs as the tutorial.

This also extends to the level-up screen. While most of it is just a parody of RPG games you can give HP, Defense, and Jump extra points to make your dragon more of a DRAGON. There's no mouse support on any of these screens, it is all KB or gamepad, so a little bit more visual feedback on these screenw would of been appreciated.

Control wise, it can take some getting used to. Dragon is controlled with the arrow keys and A/Z/X are used as his abilities. That A is his breath and Z attack, with X being jump my brain had trouble with as they are not in a row (C is a confirm button). These can thankfully all be remapped and I'd suggest doing so.

Responsiveness is rather sharp for jumping, and most damage was caused by odd hitboxes and deflection. A number of enemies can only be damaged when in an exhausted routine, while others can sustain continued HP loss from your breath attacks. A few more I was not able to harm at all, or had to level up before I could hurt them. And some will hurt you if you try to attack when they are not in a weakened state.

To aid in the attacking is the Q/W keys to swap out breath attacks. You start with good ol' Dragon Fire, and quickly learn Ice and Lightning. Lightning has a slightly longer range, and ice runs out fast. In game lore says you can use ice to freeze those pesky humans, however this never worked for me. I'm not even sure if my attempts to use it even harmed them. Stupid humans.

But they can unlock various items scattered around the maps. It's not so much of a metroidvania as they don't do much aside from show a humorous popup and give you points or a small stat boost.

A lot of the charm from this game is the crayon styled art for all the backgrounds, enemies, and cutscenes. There's a good variety here, like a children's book come to life as the dev intended.

As stated some parts can get a bit muddled, and it is in no way consistent. Animation is sparse for anything but Dragon himself, who comes complete with idle whistling loops. And the deliberately wonky lines make me wonder what it would look like if drawn using a ruler than purely by hand. It would lose what it is aiming for if just done in a paint program while holding down a straight line command, but could be just a smidge bit neater.

Audio wise, it is harmless. The music is somewhat funky though a little repetitive, but not irritating or a kind of ear worm, however the SFX is a little on the quiet side. The best bit is the total lack of voice acting, something I was dreading with a 2+ gig install size.

Yet somehow. All of the games flaws work. It's rather hard to hate on it as a whole product, even though it is not for everyone.

Would I recommend? That's harder to say. If you think 'flash' games are trash, no matter what, then this will feel like one and you might want to pass.

If you are looking for an indie game (with a dragon) I'd say to give it a shot. There is something to this one. Especially if you like the type of screwball IRC parody of fantasy clichés.

Game Acquisition: On Sale (Indiegala).
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 10 December 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP or later, Windows 8.1
Processor: Dualcore Processor
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: Integrated graphics
Storage: 2 GB available space
Additional Notes: Uses XInput. Please use a Microsoft gamepad.