I’ve had the pleasure of stumbling onto Dragon Dash, a very simple cooperative game aimed at children in a board game café (Outrider Games) with my children. My 3 year old plucked it off the shelf purely because the dragons on the box cover art had caught his eye. I’d no idea how to play the game but needed to learn quickly to get the game going for my youngest. Here’s what we discovered.
Run the Gauntlet
The players take on the role of a group of knights and have to secure safe passage for the queen across the plain. The problem is this plain is filled with dragons and picking out a safe route just isn’t easy.
For 2-4 people. The board is a simple 8×6 grid with a starting point on one edge and the exit (where you need to get the queen to) almost opposite across the board. There is a bag/pile of square tiles that remain hidden. Before play starts, weapons are dropped onto the board at random using the grid dice, if you can acquire these they will prove useful.
Play then starts and players are looking for the road/path tiles to create a route across the field from start point to exit. The problem is mixed in with the path tiles are the dragons. If a dragon is drawn, roll the grid dice and drop it on the field to where the dice reveal, this dragon as all of the dragons are, are obstacles and impassable. If this happens to be on your path created, either use a gathered weapon dropped on the start. I should have noted collecting these weapons involves building your road onto the location. If you have no weapon to fend away the dragon then the path is blocked, work on another way, or the game is over.
Equally, running out of tiles before you exit and the game is over. Create the path and you win and escort the queen to safety.
We demand safe passage
This is not a game for a serious gamer. It’s a simple board set up for this one which is great when it is geared up for younger players or families with young children, the box cover art absolutely smashes capturing the attention of a child and stimulating that imaginative thought. However, it looked good and my children got very excited as the game unfolded. Particularly when those dragons start dropping in, the intensity really ramps up for them which for me as a dad is a joyous thing to watch.
The mechanics are simple enough for them to grasp and I was really impressed that my 6 year old had got to grips with coordinates straight away. I’d never shown him before but Dragon Dash is a great introduction to building such simple little skills in. I was impressed with this as well as both kids having a good grasp of trying to create the path to safety.
Dragons everywhere!
I was stunned just how many dragons came out in this game as it was ridiculously challenging with how much of the board they were blocking off. Keep in mind the board is 8 x 6 and there are 21 pathway tiles and 16 dragon tiles. This is hard because you need to get across 13 squares on the direct route. This is allowing for cornering and such also. Plus, the creator put a dead end tile in, just ridiculous.
Dragons were flying out and landing all over the plain and created huge obstacles. I feel this is just a really hard game to complete and I could see the disappointment in the kids faces that we got so close but ran out of tiles to draw resulting in a loss. The concept of this game is very good but I feel the balance of dragons to path tiles, as well as available path tiles that are actually of use at the right moment is really hard. It was frustrating for me as an adult not seeing an easy victory and the game really boiled down to luck of the draw on success over proper tactical skill and that was a shame. It felt like you would lose this one perhaps nine times out of ten and a victory would be rare.
Final Thoughts
Dragon Dash is a fun little game that just doesn’t quite get it quite right. At 10 years old at the time of writing it feels like a little pioneer game for children’s cooperative games. The concept is good and narrative excellent but actual gameplay doesn’t quite crack it compared to other games on the market like sos dino. The game is good for a few plays but given the target audience is for children and wins being very infrequent the game perhaps doesn’t hold the attention like you would want it to.
