Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
There’s something about A Dragon’s Gift, Button Shy’s latest solo game from designer Scott Almes, that feels particularly pastoral. You can hear the opening strains of “Belle” from Beauty and the Beast as you open the Button Shy wallet and gaze upon these adorable illustrations. Then, just as the song explodes into hustle and bustle, the village’s busybodies spring to life.
Every year, the citizens of Adragonsgiftopia (I assume) come together and honor the dragon who guards the town with a gift. Different citizens have different ideas. The baker suggests a treasure chest, which seems a safe bet. The bard wants to write a poem. Typical. The sorceress is in favor of a My First Chemistry set, presumably to encourage the dragon to pursue a career in STEM or to foster a general sense of curiosity and wonder about the world around it. You draw one of the six Gift Cards and set it aside faceup.
Once the gift is chosen, the town gets to work. The remaining 12 cards show the rest of the Village. Each card includes a winding set of roads around the periphery, a natural resource, and a business. The puzzle comes in lining up the resources with the businesses that need them. Some businesses can turn a single natural resource into a moderately advanced resource. How exactly an egg seller has the facilities for minting ore into coins I do not know, nor am I entirely clear on the process through which a hardware store can turn magic into knowledge, but so it goes. Other locations can take pairs of advanced resources and turn them into something even better. The horse farm and weapons depot can turn knowledge and books into sorcery. The blacksmith and potions master can turn money and books into jewels.
On your turn, you either add the next village card to the table, being sure to connect at least one road to another that’s come before, or you can flip over a card whose building is close enough to its required resource to qualify as Supplied. At that point, the building starts generating whatever fancy resource it generates. The hope is that on and on the chain will go, until eventually you can place and generate the gift, which requires one natural resource, one moderate resource, and one advanced resource.
You’re subject to the card draw in this game, so to account for that, you have the assistance of three different modes of transportation, randomly chosen at the start of the game. These allow you to deliver goods further away, or without worrying about roads, increasing the chances of your success and decreasing the odds that luck itself will stymie you. They’re single use, but they can be refreshed when you generate the right resource, which adds a bit of timing finesse to all this.
The game ends when you create the gift, but you only win if you have enough Supplied buildings. If you manage to flip the whole town, you’ve properly beaten the game. I was surprised by the way the puzzle changed with familiarity. My first game was one of exploration, but A Dragon’s Gift quickly changed into something deterministic. It wasn’t solved, but I more or less knew the distribution and knew what needed to go where. I’m not sure that change is for the better, and it does suggest this doesn’t have the legs of something like ROVE or Embers. I enjoyed my time in this quiet village, but I’m a bit worried every day will be too much like the one before.
