Dragon Keeper

The rise of the freemium model has certainly been a controversial one. Whatever your thoughts about it from a creative perspective, from a commercial point of view it's a goldrush.

Which is what makes Dragon Keeper such a strange little game. It looks like a freemium title, it plays like a freemium title, but not once does it ask you to spend a single penny more than you paid in purchasing it.

What you're left with is a strangely listless game - one that's highly addictive but never really delivers a big pay-off. You keep your dragons, collect some gems, and then, after a while, you stop playing.

The game starts with an overwrought fairytale about an evil witch cursing a princess on her wedding day. As the princess's betrothed, it's up to you to break the curse, murder the witch, and live happily ever after.

In order to do this you invoke the help of the ancient dragons, who agree to aid you so long as you act as nursemaid for their young. The shift from the drama of the opening story to the cutesy graphics and twee soundtrack of the game proper is a jarring one, with the sedate gameplay at direct odds with the urgency of your quest.

There are four different islands for you to play on, each ruled by a different dragon that will set you a number of tasks before helping you defeat the witch.

The game has three currencies: gems, gold, and essence. Gems are basically dragon poop. Keep the lizards alive for long enough by feeding them when the icon appears above their heads and they'll squeeze out some jewels for you.

You can then turn these gems into various items of jewellery, which you can sell for gold. Gold buys you more dragons, more food trays, bigger treasure chests, and more staff to keep your dragon's living space under control.

Essence is dropped by the dastardly bandits who sneak into your giant lizard enclave and try to steal your gems. You tap on them to kill them, or, later in the game, send trolls to smash their faces in, and they drop glowing blue orbs that you can use to upgrade various parts of your dragon-enabling machinery.

The four islands are essentially progress resets. Once the first dragon has helped you, you're pushed into building a brand new dragon menagerie for the next. As such, you never really feel attached to the colourful beasts you're taking care of.

There's no strategy to your dragon nursing, and more often than not you'll just find yourself tapping wildly into the scrum of creatures, feeding, picking up gems, and attacking assailants at the same time.

Whilst Dragon Keeper is dripping in freemium trappings, from the currencies to the repetitive habit-forming gameplay, it's a straight-up, single purchase sort of a game. It's addictive, but not painfully so, and a lack of content means that you'll forget about your undeniably adorable army of little dragons pretty quickly.