The highly successful Puzzle & Dragons added monster collecting and evolving to match three puzzles and made a fortune. Quiz RPG did it with random trivia questions. Now Sega adds creature collecting to those stupid coin dozer games and I can’t stop playing. Dammit, Dragon Coins.
Had I known what sort of game this was before I downloaded it, I probably wouldn’t be writing about it right now. But, as a recent Penny Arcade comic pointed out, it’s hard to resist an icon with the words “Dragon” and “Coins” beneath it.
The game follows the same formula as any of the thousands of previous creature collecting games on iOS and Android. Players use currency of various sorts to grab Common to Super Rare creatures representing various elements from a virtual bubble gum machine. Players pick the most powerful or useful creatures and sacrifice the rest to those chosen few to increase levels and power, or match them with similar creature to evolve them into new forms.
The point is to create a team of powerful elemental creatures capable of exploiting the weaknesses of other elemental creatures, only it’s not really. The point of this game is to make coins fall.
With their team lined up along chutes at the bottom of the coin dozer device, players drop coins in order to drop coins in order to make their team attack. Sometimes crystals containing more creatures will drop onto the board. Star boxes drop, activating creature special abilities. Gold coins initiate powerful attacks. Green coins heal. Enemies have numbers next to them, counting down the number of fresh coins the player can drop before they attack.
When an enemy dies, they explode in a gush of normal coins, powerful healing coins and gold critical coins. If the timing is right, these will activate the player’s creatures enough to kill the next enemy, starting that gushing flow over again. At that point the player is a complete slave to this stupid game.
Then the missions start getting more difficult. That gushing release doesn’t happen as often. That is, unless you recruit one of your friends’ powerful creatures to help. Oh look, he has a Super Rare. Damn, that does a lot of damage. How can I get one of those? TAKE ALL OF MY MONEY FREE-TO-PLAY GAME.
I’ve not quite gotten there yet, but I can feel it building like the worst orgasm ever. It’s only a matter of time before a special deal comes along and suddenly I am hip-deep in Super Rare creatures and my family is living outside of a cardboard box (inside rent was too high).
So yes, Dragon Coins is a soul-sucking cocktail of a free-to-play game, giving players just enough gratification to get them hooked on the coin rush. It’s too late for me. Save yourselves.
Dragon Coins
- Genre: Coin-dropping collectible monster RPG
- Developer: Sega of America
- Platform: Android, iOS
- Price: Free
Get Dragon Coins on Google Play — Get Dragon Coins on iTunes
Comments
3 responses to “Further Proof That Every Game Is Better With Monster Collecting”
Brave frontier is my favourite monster collecting game. Though always looking for new ones.
Yeah I agree they have so many features and a great reddit community. With the introduction of Raid in a few month it will be much more multiplayer orientated.
“Further Proof That Every Game Is Better With Monster Collecting” [ If you’re into games about monster collecting. ]
Fixed that.
(I gave up on Ni no Kuni early because grinding levels on a collection of 50 monsters is MUCH more tedious than grinding levels on a handful of “main” characters.)
That said, if you ARE into monster collecting, I can see how it might work. Monster collecting Tetris? I almost want to play that myself.
I wish Monster Hunter make a monster collection game
I really liked monster rancher on the PS ages ago.