Dragon Crossroads

In Brief

A time management game.

Installation Issues:

Dragon Crossroads downloads to a 141 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper the set-up file and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is approximately 534 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Dragon Crossroads

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and shortcuts to a free online game; the name of which may vary each week can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation. There are details in the read me about this issue.

Introduction:

Times of great peril give rise to even greater heroes - or so the story goes in Dragon Crossroads, a time management game with a fantasy twist. A baby dragon is stolen when an evil magician invades a peaceful realm and leaves a path of destruction in his wake. Now it’s up to you to help a young man as he sets out to reclaim the kingdom, rescue the newborn and save the day! Ogres, goblins and worse lie ahead, ready to stop you in your tracks, so step carefully into the fray! With more than 50 levels across five gorgeous settings and five stunning comic book-style interludes, Dragon Crossroads will captivate you for hours on end!

Reference accessed HERE. 16th February 2019

The Game:

Dragon Crossroads is yet another in an incredibly long line of time management games that take place in a fantasy universe full of goblins, bandits and dragons. Only instead of being a fresh, polished experience, Dragon Crossroads is a game with multiple personalities; a game with fine basic mechanics, but disappointing… everything else.

The game takes place in a medieval fantasy setting, once guarded by a powerful dragon. The dragon’s child has been taken, leaving the dragon to fall into a dark depression, and the world to fall into chaos with goblins, bandits, broken roads and much more standing in your way as you attempt to set things right. Each level of this time management experience comes with a set of goals to complete, from fixing roads and buildings to defeating bandits and more, but many tasks are repeated level after level, which makes the game feel a lot less varied than it ultimately could.

Regardless of its final goals, each level will see you balancing the use of items like food, wood, stones, gold and more. Each item is created in a different building, with most being upgradeable over time. Upgrades obviously increase a building’s productivity, but purchasing these upgrades takes resources away from the end goal(s) in each level. This brings about the basic amount of strategy that you’d find in any similar time-management game, as the time limit on each stage offers Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals depending on how quickly you can complete the required tasks.

Thankfully, the workers in Dragon Crossroads move incredibly fast, without the need for special power-ups. Similarly, actions can be queued far into the future, so long as there’s a clear walking path from your worker to whichever item the action is going to be performed on. It’s definitely possible to play the entire game a few seconds into the future, as you wait for your workers to catch up in the background (which is a good thing), but at the same time, some of the level designs are so convoluted, with only one specific path being available for progression, that it makes things more confusing than fun.

Even though fast workers are a huge plus, the rest of Dragon Crossroads starts to fall apart pretty quickly. Early on, goblins are introduced to the game, and they steal 20 seconds each from your overall clock at the beginning of the level. There’s nothing you can do to stop these goblins, so you must instead waste 5-10 second at the beginning of each stage clicking on them to reclaim your lost time. This is a completely unnecessary feature that simply feels unfair, as goblins may be hidden behind trees or other structures. Additionally, the game’s graphics are downright ugly. Animals and trees in each background image are static and have skewed shapes, workers and goblins have ugly character models, and there’s no flash or polish to the game’s text menus or tutorials.

Dragon Crossroads looks and plays like a game that was created with the best of intentions, but lacks an attention to detail that would make the game really pop. The basic gameplay here works, and actually works well with the aforementioned fast workers and task queuing, but everything else feels amateurish at best. With so many other (better) time management games up for grabs on Big Fish and beyond, this is one you can easily skip without a regret.

Reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Brandy Shaul on Dec 19, 2012, reposted by Whiterabbit-uk 16th February 2019

Conclusion:

For me time management games are the least favourite arcade genre and therefore find it hard to be positive. This game is particularily repetitive and tedious, but, if you are an aficianado of such games, then you'll find this a run of the mill TM game. I'm sure some community members will enjoy this, but I wont score it as i've only played a few levels so far, and am unlikely to continue.

Videos of Dragon Crossroads:

You can see several in-game videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity 24/7 HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it HERE via Big Fish Games.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Dragon Crossroads to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try whitelisting the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Dragon Crossroads and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Dragon Crossroadsdoesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).