[Hipster Reviews] Hoard (PC)
All of the mainstream gamers play things that have you killing dragons by the dozen to protect little villages that will one day overpopulate the Earth. Well what about the dragons? Why don’t we take their feelings into account for a change? Here is a game you’ve likely never heard of called Hoard put out by Big Sandwich Games, which will give you all of the fiery revenge you’ve ever wanted on those peons in their primitive homes.
This action-strategy game lets you play as whatever color dragon you choose, and gives you free reign over different types of maps. An immediate downer for me was the fact that all the dragons came with the same skill-set. I mean, why not try to toss in some individuality? Anyway, the point of this game is to get as much gold as possible, and bring it back to your hoard. If you couldn’t figure that out from the title, you likely don’t read enough.
Gold can be obtained from burning down crops, farms, towers, and human opponents. That’s right, knights, robbers, and archers are going to fling themselves into your path of destruction, and you will reap the benefits from their inferior bodies. Kidnapping princesses and destroying magic towers that yield gems will provide extra income, but the towers are simply dreadful to destroy, and the princesses have knights running to your hoard to trying to kill you and rescue the “damsel in distress”. Can we say sexism? Ugh. After you have gained certain amount of gold, you will level up and be given the ability to improve your skills. You start out at a horrifically slow pace, and with little firepower, but can gain speed, armor, gold storage capacity, and fire damage upgrades for every level gained.
Obviously this game has more to it than that, or I wouldn’t be reviewing it now would I? This game is meant to be played in chunks, as some of us have more to do in the world than sit at our desks for hours at a time. Thankfully, there are several different mode and map combinations to choose from so things don’t get immediately boring. You can either play with, or against other dragons, but you will likely only be up against AIs, as this game is only known to a privileged few. The entirety of the game was meant to center around treasure mode, which gives you a ten minute limit to get as much gold as possible, but you likely already knew that. Or at least I should hope so anyway.
You will find this game is available for PS3, PC, Mac (as it should be), and PSP. This game only costs about $10, so there’s no reason for you to not support this Independent developer. Not everyone can work on those AAA titles, and actually need people to buy their games.
