I have always been drawn to the idea of dragons. Godzilla is maybe more ‘dinosaur’ than ‘dragon’, but that whole breathing nuclear energy thing makes him dragon-like. My favorite Power Rangers Zord has always been the Red Dragon Thunderzord from Mighty Morphin’ Season 2. Even one of my favorite (and drastically underrated) professional wrestlers from the 90’s was the Ultimo Dragon. Seriously. Ten championship belts at one time. All of that to say, dragons have kept finding their way in to the different corners of my various fandoms over the years.
We’ve established that I like dragons. Many of you are also aware that I enjoy playing games with my children. So, a family friendly game about dragons is right up our alley. Dragon Pets from Japanime Games fits this bill.
Dragon Pets
Publisher: Japanime Games, Pendragon Games Studio
Designer: Paolo Cecchetto, Christian Giove
Theme:
In Dragon Pets, players will take on the role of a dragon breeder. Each breeder will have 3 seekers that they can send in to the forest to find suitable dragons for mating. Each pair of dragons will earn you money. The player with the most money at the end of the game wins, being named the Supreme Dragon Breeder.
That’s pretty much it. There’s no real “immersion” with this game. That’s not really a knock on this game either. The coin values are printed right on the bottom of the card so you know much each pair is potentially worth. You start evaluating each dragon based on how much they can help you win. We’re mating the dragons with suitable partners of their same race, but we’re not concerned with love. We want to win, dangit.
See? Dragons can fall in love too!
I think it would be a fun mechanic if in addition to each race of dragons having males and females and varying gold values when paired together, if each dragon could have a personality trait of some sort. And you could get additional bonus gold if you were able to match males and females of the same personality trait as well as being of the same race. That way you could give players an option to be a more caring dragon breeder, trying to win through more highly compatible pairs of mates.
Gameplay:
So, when setting up the game, your forest of dragons is made up by a 4×4 grid of dragon cards. There are 4 colored discs along the forest in front of each player and an accompanying die in each color. The system for placing your seekers is very unique, and I absolutely love its variability and simplicity.
Seekers can only get dragons from the forest by moving the number of spaces in the forest equal to the value on the die for that colored row. So a 2 on the orange die, allows the seeker to claim the 2nd dragon card in the orange row. Since each player has a different configuration of colored discs along their side of the forest, two players will not necessarily be able to claim the same dragon with the same die. The 3rd card in the purple row may be the same card as the 4th card in the tan row. Even though I may not want the dragon card that the 1 on the orange die would get me, I do NOT want my opponent to get the dragon that the 1 on the orange die would get them. So I’ll take it, as a defensive move. There’s also a white die that is used to modify any of the other dice by adding or subtracting its value. A 5 or 6 showing on a die make it impossible to use it in that row of the forest, since each row only has 4 cards. But that 5 or 6 can be modified by subtracting the white die’s value.
You can also spend money to reroll the dice, replenish the forest with dragon cards, or call all of the seekers back to their breeders with their accompanying dragon cards. I like how these are directly spending your win condition to complete other actions. The gravity of these choices is heavy and felt at the end of the game as you remember how many times you might have been able to avoid spending money.
As soon as you complete a pair of dragons in your hand, you place them down in front of you, gaining the gold amount of the highest gold value between the pair. So a female blue dragon worth 4 gold and a male blue dragon worth 2 gold would get you 4 gold.
This is a fun feature because if you have a high value card in your hand, you’re not concerned with the value of its potential mate. Conversely, low value cards in your hand are totally dependent on the dragons your seekers bring back from the forest. So, is it better to match 2 dragons both worth 5 gold and keep your opponent from getting that high value? Or, is it better to match the high value with a low where there is less competition for that dragon?
For Parents:
It plays 2-4 players, which I’m finding is perfect for my family right now. I can play it with a single child if only one other person is in the mood for a game. Or multiple kids can jump in, and we can play together. Gameplay lasts 30-40 minutes. Our games went a little longer because I had to remind kids of the 2 or 3 options they had and that they would need to pick one of those options.
There are a fair number of small pieces with this game. There’s punchboard gold tokens for tracking each player’s money. Each player has their 3 seeker meeples. Then there are the colored discs and associated dice for guiding how the seekers can move through the forest. Despite what sounds like a cumbersome amount of components, it all stays very contained when on the table and is not overwhelming. The gold tokens can be left in the box to use as the supply, so you don’t have to have a pile of tokens on the table. The 4×4 grid of dragon cards keeps the table presence concise. For the amount of components that are placed during set up, it all stays very organized and streamlined during gameplay.
Set up is easy. The most difficult part will be separating the starting dragon cards from the rest of the deck if you didn’t do that when the game was last put away. Even still, the backs of the cards are different so it’s easy enough to separate them quickly.
My oldest child will be 8 next month, and if we play this together one more time, I’m confident she’ll be able to teach others how to play it. The quick reference cards are great reminders and give the right amount of information.
Final Thoughts:
Dragon Pets is a game that takes the idea of simple set collection and introduces some easy to understand mechanisms to provide a fun and unique experience. I don’t know if I would run to get this one for a game night with peers, but with the kids, it’s great. I do really like the movement mechanic with the colored rows having an associated die to dictate movement, but each player having a different configuration of colored rows based on their orientation to the playing surface. I think this is brilliant.
I would like to see the idea of matching the traits between mates, to let players have the option of focusing on a few quality sets of dragons or just getting as many as possible. It could give young players the idea that while they are doing this to earn the most gold, the idea that making the dragons happy in more compatible relationships would be more rewarding that just picking male and female of the same race.
Dragon Pets is a fun game I would definitely recommend for families. It has something for everyone to love.
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