A Dragon Named Coal

Meet Coal, a young dragon who has the curiosity of a child and the bravery of his father and ancestors before him. With a red scarf around his neck and a large sword in his little hands, Coal sets off into the vast world to uncover some of its mysteries but stumble into a greater adventure than he could have foreseen.

Initially, A Dragon Named Coal doesn’t really stand out from other games in its class. The pixel graphics are nice and give it a vintage look, the color selection is excellent and the animations are well crafted. However, when you reach the second section of the game and the narrator makes his voice heard, the game takes a turn for the good.

After a few lines of narration, Coal becomes someone other than a simple game character. You find out about the red scarf around his neck and that he’s always been curious about cake and that he’d love to have some oneday. Now that the story around the little dragon starts to take shape, so does the atmosphere begin to transform. At times it becomes gloomy, sometimes it’s a bit cheerful, somehow it always seems to change and synchronize with the pace and the action of the game.

In A Dragon Named Coal you will encounter characters that are just as interesting and mysterious as Coal. One of which is a little girl who’s accompanied by an animated teddy bear and is really into magic. Every interaction you have with her and other NPCs will determine how they turn up in the game. If you choose to guide Coal down the path of wrongful deeds the characters around you will be darker, but if you take the high road, they might just glow a bit.

The gameplay is that of a classic platformer in most parts except for the fact that you get an inventory for your character, there are items to craft and imbue and a few more features that belong to the RPG genre. If you die you get to restart at the last checkpoint and a nice thing about the game is that it repopulates each level with randomized loot.

A Dragon Named Coal is also a clever game because there are a lot of tricks and hidden places to find. Moreover, some enemies won’t go down by the blade of your sword or the little fireballs you spit but by setting off some traps.

To sum things up, A Dragon Named Coal is a wonderful creation. It’s immersive from the first few minutes and as you make your way through each dungeon and cave, it offers more and more to keep you going.

Even in its Pre-Alpha stages, it’s well polished and a delight to play. It’s something you really need to try.