Game: Hoard

Platform: PC

Publisher: Big Sandwich Games

Developer: Big Sandwich Games

ESRB: E

Genre: Arcade Dragons Stealing Gold

Players: 1-4

What's Hot: Surprising depth for a 10 minute filler game

What's Not: The game isn’t the same playing against the AI

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Review by: William Abner

Dragons are the worst! They fly around the land, blasting towns, burning fields, killing archers and knights, snatching up every princess in the greater metropolitan area, and for what? Gold? What is a dragon going to do with a bunch of gold coins? Yes, dragons are the worst. Unless you get to be the dragon. In that case it’s a really good time.

Hoard, the formerly PS3 exclusive recently released on Steam, is a filler game. Matches take 10 minutes and it’s the perfect product for a quick evening of multiplayer gaming or if you simply have a few minutes (10, specifically) to kill and want to burn stuff up.

The idea and mechanics are both simple. You and up to three other players play as dragons in a generic medieval fantasyland. Your goal, in most games, is to collect as much treasure as you can in the form of gold, pretty eggs, princesses, and large gems. You zip your dragon around the map, preferably with a gamepad although keyboard support is provided, dodging attacks from archers, wizard towers, the occasional wandering giant, as well as other dragons, in search of loot.

This loot is collected by setting fire to farms, towers, treasure carts, towns, picking up a princess and in effect ransoming her back at your lair, etc. In the end of the 10 minute match the dragon with the biggest hoard wins. Easy enough.

However, there is a heck of a lot going on inside this seemingly simplistic game. As your dragon obtains more treasure it gains points which allow you to upgrade its skill in speed, fire strength, defense, and the amount of loot it can hold before having to fly back home to drop it all off. Stay alive long enough and gather treasure and you earn a score multiplier which is a fast way to rack up big points. Giants may stumble into the land, carrying a rather large club and a penchant for smashing stuff with it: towers, towns, dragons that get in the way, pretty much everything in sight. If you can take it down the resulting gold reward is huge.

Then there are the towns that are spaced around the maps. If you beat down on them enough they’ll raise the white flag and offer you tribute—literally wheeling the gold right out of town and to your lair. Did I mention that thieves also like to sneak in your home and steal your stuff while you’re out gallivanting around the countryside? The map is peppered with all sorts of doo dads like this which makes a four player game an extremely chaotic 10 minutes of zero downtime, outright thievery, and constant movement. When you throw all of this stuff into the design blender it turns what is a very simple game into something much more than that. This is especially true when playing online with friends. It’s also what makes playing games against the AI such a disappointment. The solo game works, technically, but the AI can’t keep pace with a moderately good player and is best used as a learning tool. If you don’t have friends to play with it’s a much harder sell.

Still, Hoard’s multiplayer design accomplishes exactly what it set out to do: provide quick and well paced matches between rival dragons looking for more shiny coins wrapped nside a design that is deceptively deep. This is 10 bucks well spent.

William Abner is the Editor-in-Chief of GameShark . He is also co-founder of No High Scores and is a regular on the Jumping the Shark podcast.

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