What kid hasn’t pretended to be a dragon at one point? Now your whole family can be dragons with Hoard, a downloadable title for the PS3. In Hoard you’ll do all the things dragons are supposed to do: fly around, terrorize humans, breathe fire, torch crops, kidnap princesses, and try to get the most treasure!

Hoard is viewed from a top-down perspective. The main goal in most of the levels is to steal the most gold. The easiest way to obtain gold is to torch any manmade object or person. Crops, windmills, towns, castles, wagons, and people all leave behind gold when burned. You can then pick up this gold and take it back to your lair for points. You can only carry so much, though. When you gather enough treasure, you can level up your dragon’s stats, such as flight speed, fire power, defense, and how much gold you can carry.

There are other ways to gather treasure, too. Torch enough town buildings and the citizens will fear you and start bringing treasure to your lair as tribute. Just make sure not to destroy ALL the town or they’ll forget. If you are playing multiplayer, other dragons can make your towns fear them more, and the town will switch sides! Also, if you see a royal carriage, kidnap the princess inside and take her to your lair. You’ll have to fend off heroic knights for a short while, but if you do, you’ll get tons of ransom money! Just be careful not to torch your captive princess by mistake!

You’ll have to deal with other obstacles, too. Dodge flaming arrows from archers and the blades of heroic knights. And don’t let thieves steal your loot! Later on you’ll have to avoid magic shots from wizard towers, too. Of course, if there is more than one dragon on the field, you’ll have to compete for gold, too. There are many different game modes, like a race to get the most treasure, kidnap more princesses, or work together in co-op to gather treasure together. Up to four players can compete in local or online multiplayer. Play control is easy, just fly with the left stick and breathe fire with the right.

If you’re not a hardcore gamer who doesn’t remember the Super Nintendo, you can skip this next paragraph. But Hoard reminded me a lot of a SNES classic: ActRaiser. Remember the action-based town building simulation part of that game? Well, just imagine that in reverse. Instead of building up a town, you’re trying to tear it down. Now just imagine four of you doing that at the same time!

The only problem I can see with Hoard is it’s a tiny bit pricey for such a simplistic game. Maybe more game modes or a level editor might’ve sweetened the deal more. Plus the gameplay can get repetitive at times. Hoard is best in short bursts with a bunch of friends or family. Hopefully we can see Hoard on other consoles down the road as well. I can even picture it on the DS maybe!  It’s a darn fun little gem.

Kid Factor:

Hoard is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence. You do breathe fire at buildings and people. But since the graphics make it look like everything is on top of a table, the objects you torch really just look like toy figurines. Reading skill is helpful for the text instructions, and the CPU dragons may be too tough for younger gamers. But Hoard is still a great family game as up to four players can play, and there are plenty of competitive and cooperative game modes.

Tags: Game Reviews