Dragon Battle

After 2 years of development and polish, the dragon horde is ready to be unleashed upon the world.

A new take on the retro CRPG format, Dragon Battle offers players a progression of increasingly-difficult dragons leading up to the ultimate battle: the Dragon King himself!

Choose your class:

serf / peasant
knight
wizard
ryukyu / karate master

As you progress through the battles, your skills and spells organically level up. Experience points are earned through failure, and the game's super-crunchy combat system provides lots of opportunity for failed skill checks! With 25 total dragon battles against 9 different dragons that lead up to the final encounter with the Dragon King, there's also lots of opportunity to hone your skills as you prepare for the final encounter. Higher level dragons randomly drop magic weapons and armor, and many semi-magic items are available for sale in the market. Level up your riddle skill and unlock the secret peaceful ending!

The game itself unfolds like the retelling of an ancient myth, with all the dramatic action that narrative storytelling can provide. Great play-acting material for Dungeon Masters / Game Masters who want to work on their narrative technique.

Features:

Beautiful 8-bit Gameboy pixel art
Rockin' original chip tune soundtrack
Super-crunchy custom rpg ruleset
10 unique dragons
20+ different riddles
Endless hours of gameplay

How the game was born

The initial game was developed over 10 months building out a super-crunchy RPG system within the limitations of the GameBoy format. We needed to refine the combat system, so focussed on a loop of dragon battles and discovered it was incredibly fun. When Reddit play testers called our initial Dragon Battle demo in October 2020 "joyful" and "incredibly addictive" we knew we had built something new and interesting in the JRPG format. Playtesters reported spending 6+ hours per gaming session, diving in and leveling up their character during epic encounter after epic encounter. When my brother tested the game at home, my 9 year old nephew ran from the room in fear of the terrifying dragon encounter that appeared on the screen. The game was hitting all the right triggers.

Another year+ was spent polishing, building out dragons, and countless hours of balancing to get the perfect level of insane difficulty. In October of 2021 we tested the built-out game with gamers at TwoBit Circus' BETA night inside of a tensegrity sphere / dragon cave, and they agreed with the Redditors. One playtester shook my hand after emerging from the dragon cave, laughing appreciatively at how much he enjoyed getting eaten by a dragon. "You're clearly onto a winner here," he said.

A few more months have been spent debugging and polishing, testing on a flashcart on a GameBoy Pocket to make sure it works flawlessly on original hardware (so far so good). Now with builds for PC, Mac and Linux, the Dragon King is ready to challenge the world!

To help players and make the game more fun (and in case of accidental crashes), we ultimately added an auto-save system after each dragon victory so players can return to their last victory and pick up where they left off in case the worst comes to pass.

Ready to be a lucky dragon's next meal?

Or will YOU be the Champion of Legend who defeats the Dragon King?

Dragon Battle screenshots