Developer: Wild Forest Studio
Publisher: Curve Games
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Dragon Shelter – Review
After playing (and enjoying) Flamecraft, giving Dragon Shelter a go seemed like a logical next step. On paper, it sounds like a great recipe for a cosy game: take Stardew Valley’s tried-and-true farming sim formula and add friendly dragons that help out with manual labour. Unfortunately, a good concept alone isn’t enough, and Dragon Shelter didn’t live up to our expectations. How so, you ask? Well, read on, dear reader, as we’ll try to get to the bottom of what went wrong here.
Story
Oh boy, it’s the classic farming sim setup again: you’ve inherited the family homestead from your grandfather, but it has fallen into disrepair. Upon arriving at the derelict farm, you find that the inhabitants of the neighbouring village are depressed and unmotivated. It’s up to you to restore not just the farm but also gain the trust of the townsfolk, fix up the dilapidated village, and bring joy back to the community. Now, as familiar as this premise sounds, Dragon Shelter does add a major twist in the form of… dragons. In the glory days of the past, the village had a long-standing connection with dragons, but as they disappeared, so did the people’s drive. It would seem that bringing back the dragons is the key to success. As interesting as this idea sounds, the story elements quickly get buried beneath repetitive tasks and quest demands. Dialogues are as vague and awkward as they are short, with villagers exhibiting little personality or interest in sharing background lore.
Graphics
As much as we enjoyed Dragon Shelter’s aesthetic overall, the execution of the game’s visuals leaves some things to be desired. The game utilises a colourful, top-down 3D presentation combined with 2D assets and a soft cel-shaded finish. The dragon designs and their animations are the standout here, being cute, expressive and detailed. In contrast, human character models look basic, muddy, and unfinished. The game’s UI isn’t up to snuff either, with dark UI boxes, text and numbers getting cut off on trade screens and tiny, unidentifiable crafting icons. While Dragon Shelter is plagued by more than just visual issues, these are prominent and spearhead the overall lack of polish that the game suffers from as a whole.
Sound
To Dragon Shelter’s credit, the soundtrack is great… when it’s audible. The calm bardic music is dominated by guitar, flute, and piano notes that fit with the intended cosy atmosphere. Unfortunately, the music frequently drops out entirely, leaving long stretches of unnatural silence that undercut the slow gameplay. Sound effects and ambience fare better, with environmental audio relying on natural sounds like flowing water and buzzing insects, providing the farm with a pleasant sense of life. Voice acting is absent.
Gameplay
Over the years, we’ve played enough farming sims to understand the appeal of the core mechanics. When done right, the familiar loop of waking up, watering crops, gathering materials, and crafting can be downright addictive. Unfortunately, Dragon Shelter isn’t a game that does this right. We’ll get to the plethora of bugs that plague the game in due time, but there are some fundamentals that the game outright gets wrong. Player actions consume a disproportionately high amount of energy, for example. In early stages, chopping just two or three trees or watering crops completely drains your energy bar, forcing you to consume high-value food or call it a day as early as 2 PM. The game operates on a 14-day seasonal cycle, and missing a specific seasonal crop can lock quest progress until the next cycle. The playable world feels tiny compared to other genre entries, consisting mainly of your farm and the adjacent town. There is no accessible world map, and features like fishing feel incomplete due to a lack of designated spots.
It’s not all negative, mind you. The game’s cooking system is one of the few highlights, offering a detailed and unique minigame where every step of a recipe must be executed manually. We loved just how hands-on this system was. The game’s signature mechanic, the dragons, are also wonderfully implemented. Once coaxed out with food, dragons act as farm hands and kitchen assistants. They can automatically perform specific tasks, such as watering crops or finishing steps in queued cooking recipes, as well as use tools to chop trees or break rocks if equipped. On rare occasions, Dragon Shelter’s potential really shines through. Ironically enough, moments like these also highlight the sorry state that the rest of the game is in.
That inevitably brings us to the bugs, and boy are there a lot of them. During our time with the game, we ran into broken pathfinding AI for dragons, hitboxes overlapping, resulting in the destruction of berry bushes while chopping trees, game crashes, and even error popups appearing during gameplay. We’ll admit that we spent less time playing Dragon Shelter than we would have liked, but that has more to do with how much of a buggy mess the game is and less with the game’s concept. Had this been an Early Access release, we probably would’ve shrugged and moved on, but this being the full build of the game is simply unacceptable. Unless there is a massive update in the near future, we suggest you keep your €19.99 in your pocket.
Conclusion
As much as we wanted to like Dragon Shelter, our goodwill only stretches so far. The core concept is fantastic, and there are glimmers of brilliance in there, but the finished product is a technical mess, to put it kindly. We’re not saying that Dragon Shelter is unsalvageable, but Wild Forest Studio will have to really put in an effort if they want to turn things around.
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