Charming Free-To-Play Match-Three Game Dragon Academy Is Live In The App Store

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Dragon Academy

With an odd mix of Bejeweled and Pokemon, including a dash of inspiration from Puzzles and Dragons, Dragon Academy aims to be your next iOS game addiction. available now in the App Store for the low price of free-to-play, Dragon Academy tasks you with matching jewels of different dragon-enhancing powers to level up your adorable, charming dragons for even more jewel-matching fun.

We got the chance to sit down with Trent Polack, creative director at developer Team Chaos, and chat a bit about dragons, “hatch-three” puzzle games, and why the team decided to go with such a saturated genre to begin with.

Polack says that initially, even he was dubious about making another jewel-matching game. “While puzzle games aren’t exactly a rarity on mobile app stores,” he said, “our goal was to take a variety of different ideas from games we’ve always loved and grew up playing, make it our own, make it something memorable, and make it something that anyone, anywhere, at anytime can play and challenge their friends with.”

So, they decided to just go for it, and the CEO yelled something about making sure there were dragons in the game. So the team got the character designer to make some cute dragon babies. Because babies. The team thought they were awesome, but then wanted to see them when they grew up, hence the leveling up mechanic.

“Then we were jerks,” said Polack, “and made increasingly devious puzzle mechanics spread across all these worlds like Frozen Fundra (because it’s so fun, you see) and Wobblinopolis.”

While the dragons don’t battle (“for now,” said Polack), they do level up. When they level up, they get special powers unique to each dragon. Polack let us in on each of the adorable little creatures’ powers:

Melty, our iconic purple dragon, will use his acid breath that will melt all tiles in one/two/three columns (depending on his level), which is great for some of our more objective-oriented puzzles. Shimmer, the sonic wave dragon, will choose tiles at random and cause a sonic boom that totally rearranges the board (and gets stronger as she levels up). And Thunderlina, the lightning dragon, is… well. She’s maybe a little overpowered, but she commands LIGHTNING. I mean. It makes sense.

Obviously, after that bit of info, we had to find out: do dragons like toast? Polack let us in on the real skinny:

Listen, we need to get one thing straight here. Not all dragons are the same. They all have their own preferences. So, remember this in case you ever encounter one in the wild:

Melty (the purple dragon): Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Pokey (the red dragon): Brisket from Franklin in downtown Austin.
Thunderlina (the blue dragon): Batteries.
Emma (the green dragon): Salads. And emeralds.
Frosty (the silver dragon): Ice cream.
Shimmer (the gold dragon): Dandelions.

So there you have it, Dragon Academy and all the truthiness we could handle from the fine folks at Team Chaos. Need more? You’re going to have to download this fun little match-three puzzler and see for yourself.

Source: App Store

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