Dragons… vicious, fire breathing, and… greedy? That certainly seems to be the case with Big Sandwich’s HOARD. HOARD is a top down action game starring a generic dragon as the main character. This simple but addictive game has one goal… collect more gold than your opponents, who are also dragons. With such a simple concept, its easy to see why one might think Hoard is a empty experience so to say. However, that isn’t the case with this fantastically addictive game.
The first time you start the game, you will see that HOARD has some seriously cool design aspects and even the loading screens look crisp. After reaching the main menu, most players with go straight to the tutorial level, as they should. There they will play a very well made learning level teaching you most of the ins and outs of the game. Even after the tutorial level, there is still much to be learned about how to play this deceivingly deep game. The objective is simply to collect gold but there are so many different strategies to go about getting that gold.
When a match begins, everyone will have no stat upgrades to their dragon… But not for long. You can upgrade your dragons speed, firepower, gold carrying limit, or its defense. You are able to get these upgrade points after every time you fill your gold pile to a certain amount. It is generally a good idea to upgrade every stat evenly so you don’t have any major weaknesses. You will eventually have a routine of which stats you upgrade first, but that is mostly up to your playing style.
The different methods of collecting gold each have their own challenges. The main challenge is to keep your gold multiplier at x3 which isn’t hard until players start attacking each other. Once a player kills someone else, their multiplier goes back to 0. This can really mess someone up for the rest of the ten minute match so it is important to stay both aggressive but defensive at the same time. The easiest is to just burn down a windmill and it surrounding crops. That wont be enough to supply you with much gold though, so then you will move on to destroying a town. Every map has multiple towns and each player will generally stick to their own town unless to attempt kill another players dragon. If you terrorize a single town long enough, it’s citizens will begin delivering gold to your pile in the hopes that you will let them be. If you do decide to let a town live and thrive, larger gold carrying supply carts will leave the town that you can then destroy and take its goods. Once kingdoms begin popping up, you will be able to destroy a carriage and kidnap their princess. Kidnapping royalty can fetch a great price, but only after you keep her protected at your pile for enough time. Lastly, the most difficult yet most lucrative way to make money is by destroying a magic tower. They begin popping up later on in the match and are pretty difficult to beat. If you do manage to destroy one, though, there will be a gen worth 3000 gold lying above its ashes. If you deliver the gem when you have a x3 multiplier, it could be a game changer with a 9000 gold pick-up. The only downside to picking up the gem is how slow you move. You instantly become a target to the rest of the people in your game.
Single player mode is decent. You get to play all the maps and get a feel for the game well enough. That being said, it can’t be compared to playing online with someone you know. Few things are as fun as kill your friends dragon just as they are about to deliver a 9000 gold gem and sending them back to 0 multiplier. Multiplayer is incredibly addictive and I have already played it until 2:30 am for a few nights. The only major problem I have with the game is that it suffers from serious game dropping problems. 2 out of my first 4 matches were cut short due to the game dropping. After checking the forums for the game, I saw that many people did in fact have the same problem that I was having. No official patch has been announced by Big Sandwich Games but I imagine one must be on the way.
One minor problem that I had with the game is that it wouldn’t run properly on my laptop that is capable of running World of Warcraft and many other Steam games at decent settings. Every time I loaded HOARD on my PC there was a very heavy flicker on the screen. I don’t know if others have had this problem but I believe it’s worth mentioning. Before HOARD was on PC, it was on PS3 and PSP and since its port to PC there have been many fixes as far as performance is concerned as well as more content than the console versions.
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HOARD is a excellent value at $9.99 and a great game. You can even spend $29.99 for four copies of the game on Steam, sending three to your friends. That’s a truly great deal because HOARD is at it’s best while your playing with friends (and destroying them like I did to our editor Long). Its beauty is in its veiled complication. Although it may seem simple from the start, HOARD becomes one of the deepest games of its kind as you slowly learn more about the game as you play it. If you have a strong enough PC to run HOARD and an internet connection there is no excuse for you to not pick up this gem.
