Saturday Casual Gaming 29: Merge Dragons

Merge Dragons is a free-to-play casual mobile game from Gram Games. I've been playing on my cellphone for about a week now, and I'm not very deep into it, but it's cute, it's fun, and it fills a match-3 void for me, since I actively despise Candy Crush and its ilk. Call me crazy, but I have a hard time enjoying Candy Crush when I know how little they care about what their players can afford. While, yes, there are plenty of opportunities to spend real money in Merge Dragons, however, Gram Games has taken pity on those of us with tight budgets and, at least so far, I haven't had to shell out for anything. You can get the premium currency for free in-game (kind of like how, if you're patient and have enough high-CP Pokemon in Pokemon Go, you can just spam the gyms and earn up to 50 gold per day...).

Now, I'm not saying I'm any good at this game, but it's pretty fun, and if you like dragons the way I do, then this will scratch that itch, too. There's so many different breeds in different colors, and it hits that collector part of my brain hard. I love match-3 games, too, so this has been a lot of fun.

This is what the "Camp" section of this game looks like, btw.
The purple d20 in the upper right corner is the premium currency

As you may be able to tell, this brightly-colored game has some really interesting elements to it, and you don't have to stop at matching 3 of a kind. You can match as many as you like, tbh. Those three big stars? You can combine them. Do you have 5 sprouts? Match them for extras. Chaining matches gets you fat bonuses.

Individual levels look like this.

Now, the dragons you collect, hatch, raise, and combine do all the heavy lifting - they gather those yellow hearts from flowers, they can harvest things from nodes, and they build things for you. Your job is to make matches. Some objects cannot be matched (some evil bushes or certain chests, for instance), but must things can. Have three coins that look alike? Match them to make bigger coins worth more. Three berries? Match. Three statues? That might be the end of your level, so make sure you've got what you want from the level (like a treasure chest that might contain extra coins or something...).

The storyline here is basically this: bad guys have killed everyone and it's up to you and one last dragon to resurrect the world and put things to rights. The tutorial teaches you everything perfectly, so I don't really have to tell you how to play the game. The game will let you know what you need to know!

It's not all sunshine and rainbows, though. I have some bones to pick (well, outside of the cleanup I'm doing at my Camp, at least). There are timed levels. Those of you who know me know that I hate timed levels at anything. I don't like the stress and I don't perform well when I'm trying to beat a clock. These are something I could do without. My other bone of contention is far less annoyed and more bemused: This game is seriously addicting.

Sometimes I still see those stupid fluffy seeds floating past my eyes when I close them. I'll look at a trio of bushes irl and think "I wonder what those would turn into". It's definitely not something you want to be playing if, like me, you've been sick with a cold that makes you... slow.

That being said, it's so much fun to see what matching three seeds will produce, or seeing how far you can chain your mushrooms until you get free chests, or to hatch eggs and combine your dragons!

It's one case where, after having been pestered with ads for this game for nearly a year, I can honestly say it was actually worth the download.

So that's all I have to say about Merge Dragons.  Well, that and "you should probably play this if you're on mobile!"

Go Enjoy Something!
FC