Dragon Gardens

A game about growing gardens and worshipping dragons.

I have a weird fascination with game systems or game engines, especially when it comes to board games. This one combines two.

Dragon Gardens is a game I designed for both the Looney Pyramids and the Decktet.

The Looney Pyramids are a project by Andrew Looney of Looney Labs, which provides a set of versatile stackable pyramids usable for a variety of applications and games.

The Decktet is a project by P.D. Magnus, which is a six-suited deck of playing cards, with multiple suits per card distributed unevenly across the ranks.

Dragon Gardens is my attempt at unifying the two, creating a game that leverages some of the strengths of both.

In Dragon Gardens you play as Cultists tending to a beautiful flowery garden in honour of the very dragons you worship.

The object of the game is to perform a number of rituals at a number of Dragon Shrines faster than your opponents.

You have three sizes of cultist: small, medium, and large. The cultists move at different speeds. The smaller one is more nimble but gets knocked back easier, while the big one lumbers ahead slowly but hits like a truck.

On your turn you either expand the garden by playing a card onto the play area, or you play a card for its number to acquire movement points and move the cultists around.

The cards come in three different variants:

  • Aces: which act as the shrines,
  • Crowns: which act as portals,
  • Ranks (2-9): which act as the regular movement/garden cards.

Once someone has finished performing a ritual at 2-3 shrines (depending on player count), that player is declared the winner.

The game isn’t totally 100% finished. It still needs a bit of polishing to smooth out the rough edges of the game, but that requires a lot more playtesting.

Furthermore, I also want to get a custom set of cards and game pieces made for the game. As nice as the Decktet and Looney Pyramids are, I think the game would definitely benefit from a thematic lift.

What You Need to Play This

  • An Extended Decktet. You can get a copy here: https://www.decktet.com/
  • A trio (one large, medium, and small) of Looney pyramids per player. You can get those here: https://store.looneylabs.com/
    • Alternatively, you can use three Chess pieces per player for this.
      Queen for a large, Bishop for a medium, and Pawn for a small.
      Just make sure to have enough different colours available for each player.

Links

Credits

The dragon and flower icons are shared under a Creative Commons BY 3.0 license and are made by Lorc (https://lorcblog.blogspot.com/)