Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Computer games - Dragon Court

Dragon Court is a nice fantasy RPG that I came across in 2000.  The original game has not changed much (although there is now a Dragon Court 2) but it is still quite addictive and fun to play.  

You start the game by deciding on your character's guts (hit points), wits and charm scores and also deciding if they are trained as a fighter, trader (more like a rogue or wizard (you may choose not to train them in anything and put more points into your stats)

There is no story for the game.  You are given locations to explore where you will come across various creatures and people and you need to deal with them in some way.  Most of them you will either have to fight or run away from.  You can trade or help a few people.  If you train in wizard, trader or fighter skills, you can get more options (fighters can beserk, traders can swindle and backstab and wizards can hypnotize.)

After each encounter, you may get experience, money, items and a possible increase to guts, wits or charm.  Once you have gone up a few levels, more locations open up to you - a forest, mountains, goblin warrens, the Queen's castle, a couple of far off lands - where you can take on greater challenges and do some interaction with nobles and go up the royal ranks.

There is no real aim to the game, either.  You wander around and try to do as well as possible.  You have a limited number of 'quests' (actions) per day so you cannot go on forever.  However, once you have gone up a few levels and obtained more quests, playing a game for the day takes up a good amount of time.  

There is plenty of variety to the game.  It reminds me of Fabled Lands without the quests.  It is good to see your character improve over time.  The game also has a very nice community where you can talk to the other players and swap items with them.  If you are looking to model a simple system for your gamebooks or ideas for locations and encounters, the Dragon Quest is a good place to find inspiration.

You can play Dragon Quest here.

You can play Dragon Quest 2 here 

I obtained the screenshots from here where you can see more.



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