Dragon Sprouts

A cute game about building your own dragon sanctuary filled with adorable dragons. An interesting game with potential but needs more time to cook.

My review is written in the early access stage so obviously changes will be made continuously as the game is worked on. This is just my impressions at the time of early access.

Gameplay

There is a simple tutorial to start you off that gets you going. To claim the portal and grow your eggs however hold your left mouse button to “feed” magic to them. I am not sure how to remove the corruption blocks beyond the tutorial and building and clearing around their perimeters do not seem to work.

In the game you destroy rocks, grass, and corruption that will net you crystals per destruction. To destroy an item just hold down the mouse button on the item and you’ll see a pickaxe symbol. Once destroyed it leaves behind a crystal you have to click on to collect (no auto-collection sadly). You collect crystals to buy upgrades for your sanctuary such as food, grass, flowers, lights, toys for your dragons, beds, walkways, fences, trees and bushes, and miscellaneous items (wells, fountains etc).

Compared to other games in this genre the grind can be a lot so expect to spend a lot of time to earn crystals.

Settings & Features

Settings & features include; Controls, display and resolutions options with lots of settings you can customize for shadows, view distance, textures, etc., and audio controls. There are also options for screen mode, benchmark, and fps limit.

The Visuals & Audio

Visually the game is nice. Each area is messy and bare-bones until you clean it up and start building the sanctuary. The music is relaxing, and the ambient sounds well done, such as the sounds you hear while breaking down rocks (pickaxe noise) or the tinkle of collecting a crystal.

The dragons do make cute little snoring sounds when they sleep and adorable crunching noises when they eat. But when you pet them, all you see is a bunch of hearts flying out. I wish they made a cute trilling noise when you petted them. They don’t fly in game really, they hover above the ground for a few seconds at times but never fly around.

Wishlist

🔹 Allow for the game to be paused.
🔹 Allow upgrades for the pickaxe so we can destroy stuff faster
🔹 Let us zoom out more to get a bigger overall view of the whole park
🔹 The corruption spawns way too fast (seriously) I broke an area and 5 seconds later it regrew
🔹 Make crystals auto pickup possibly?
🔹 I could not find a way to move an item once placed (the controls layout did not show how to as well).
🔹 Make Gremlins faster and give them dual purpose so they each destroy tiles and collect crystals

Overall Experience

The grind in this game is honestly a lot. You need to pretty much put something down on every single tile to prevent regrowth or break 4 tiles and put something down in the center of them. I got into a pattern of pickaxing a few tiles and immediately laying down flower tiles right after as I went. I am not sure how to clear the corruption blocks beyond the simple opening tutorial.

I find it needs a lot of work but has a lot of potential in the long run and the dragons are cute. However I highly recommend trying the demo out before purchasing. I will revisit the game in about 6 months and update my review where necessary. 🐉

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IndieGems wishes to thank Cozy Fox Games for providing a free review copy for this game.

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This game is cute, but I got kind of bored rather quickly. I absolutely love the idea of this game and the dragons and hope that the developer will continue to expand on the game, but in it's current state it just wasn't my favorite.

What I Loved:

• Cozy game with adorable dragons. Watching the dragons exploring was probably my favorite part.
• It's low pressure and has good vibes.

What Caused My "No" For Recommendation:

• The tutorial wasn't as helpful as I wanted it to be. I think I learned more from clicking around than from the tutorial, especially when it came to taking care of the dragons.
• The corruption seems to spawn really quickly and the workers don't clean it up very fast. You need to pretty much put an item down on every single spot to prevent it from respawning.
• The copy / paste feature just did not work for me.
• Clicking on the crystals (currency) didn't always register and or would be too close to an area I didn't have unlocked and sometimes wouldn't let me pick them up.
• The items you get to decorate with are cute, but it felt limited on options.
• Feels grindy more than fun and I think having some sort of story would have helped keep me engaged.

I had high hopes for this one cause I absolutely adore dragons and have been in my cozy era lately, and it's well done for being an indie game with just a single developer, but after about an hour of playing and grinding out crystals I was just done. I'll be watching this one for future updates though because I feel like it has potential.

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In the short time I've spent in this game, unfortunately I can't recommend it.

The UI for the title screen feels reminiscent of a mobile game with the small buttons, and the way that the title card for the game is stretched to the point of being pixelated and horribly blurry only to fade out into a much less interesting menu.

From what I was able to play of the game (please note that I didn't get much further than hatching my first dragon and clearing up some of the corruption), the tutorial text would vanish at random, the copy and paste function refused to... function? The UI feels terribly scaled (no pun intended), and while the game is cute, I just can't suggest this in good faith.

I had very high hopes for this game, and there's definitely something amazing here. It just needs a bit more time to bake.