Hoard

Hoard is an original arcade strategy game in which the player controls a dragon trying to amass as large a treasure of gold as possible, while rampaging across the map, kidnapping princesses for ransom, and burning villages whose inhabitants flee before it. On the surface it looks like a simple action game, but underneath lies a well-thought-out economic system — gold can be invested into upgrading the dragon, its speed, or its breath, or it can instead be left riskily piled up, where it becomes more vulnerable to enemy units and knights trying to raid the dragon's lair and steal the gold back.

Gameplay demands constant decisions between aggressive raiding and careful defense of the accumulated treasure, with the map shared with other players in a local co-op and competitive mode for up to four dragons at once, who can also steal gold from each other. The colorful, stylized graphics and lighthearted, fairy-tale tone contrast with fairly merciless game mechanics, where one careless moment can mean losing a large part of your accumulated gold to an opponent.

At the time, Hoard was well received particularly for its fresh combination of simple rules with a deeper strategic layer, and for its entertaining multiplayer, which made it an ideal title for playing with several people on one screen. On PlayStation Network it stood out as an interesting example of how smaller independent studios managed to build an addictive, imaginative game with its own identity out of a seemingly trivial idea about a greedy dragon.

Short, intense matches, where the outcome is often decided by the last few seconds full of improvisation and risky decisions, made Hoard an ideal title for quick sessions with friends as well as for repeated play in shorter bursts. That is also why, even years later, the game still comes up in players' memories as one of the pleasantly uncomplicated yet tactical representatives of the early era of downloadable games on PlayStation 3.

Why play it: For short, intense matches where the outcome is decided in the final seconds full of improvisation, Hoard is a great choice for quick sessions with friends as well as repeated play in shorter bursts.