The past…several decades have seen a massive influx into the world of farming management games. Harvest Moon walked so that Stardew Valley could run. And many, many, many games have been attempting to catch the same energy that these previous titles gained. One such title is Dragon Shelter.

Dragon Shelter, coming to us from Wild Forest Studio and Curve Games, is a farming management game…with dragons. Yes, dragons.

Gamer Social Club was able to get our hands on an early preview to the now-available demo on Steam. With that being said, let’s just dive right into it!

The World & The Story

The World

So. The world of Dragon Shelter. We don’t know a whole lot about the world. Outside of the farm that we…grew up on (they don’t outright say), the only other area of the world that we see is the ruined town with no name. And the handful of very depressed residents that still reside there.

That’s honestly all we’re given. That, and dragons inhabit this world.

The Story

Now, it very well might be that because its so early in the game, but the story is almost non-existent. The only real glimpse of a story is shown in the opening scene of the game of our protagonist venturing out into the world and locating the farm that he clearly spent time at as a younger individual.

As I mentioned earlier, this farm that we’re staying out is just outside of a very desolate and ruined town. It seems like we’ll be getting tasked with fixing up this town, and forging a bond with out scaly friend along the way.

Let’s dive into the gameplay!

The Gameplay

Dragon Shelter at its core is a farming management game. Taking that into account, much of your gameplay will be cleaning up your property, harvesting resources, growing crops, mining (I assume). Oh yeah. And cooking. Cooking is a BIG deal in this title.

The cooking process, I have to admit, is pretty cool. It’s not as simple as ensuring that you have the needed ingredients, walking up to a fire, and pressing X. You need to grind up that grain, mix it with water, place it in an oven, light the flame, and let time pass. More complex, but definitely requires some more planning when it comes to your cooking area. For example, mine is a nightmare above.

And the dragon can cook too!

Outside of this, there wasn’t a whole lot else to the gameplay, outside of the quests for the various villagers in town. I also…didn’t get to play too much beyond the initial hour or so.

The Good

So, since my time with Dragon Shelter was brief, I’ll keep these sections a little more abbreviated than my normal dives.

• The art style is incredibly cute and cozy, which is definitely seen in the chibi designs of the various town residents.
• The music and sound design was very nice – it was calming, and provided a nice ambience to a farm tucked away into the woods.
• The dragon is just cute as hell – that’s all that needs be said.

The Bad

Now, I covered the good. But what did I not enjoy in my brief time with Dragon Shelter? Let’s head into it.

• The demo hard crashed several times, for seemingly no reason. This is actually one of the reasons that I didn’t continue on too far in this demo. There were only so many times I could see the game crash before I gave up.
• The font is comically small in this game and there are no options to boost the size. Couple that with a larger monitor and I was straining to see things on the screen at points.

• There is so little backstory and depth to this world (at least in the demo) that I legitimately had a hard time caring about anyone. The townsfolk that mention their desolate homes? Why should I care? I have all the resource I need just around the corner.
• While the cooking was intuitive, coupled with the small font size, following the directions was rough.

The Overall

I do think that there is a lot of potential in Dragon Shelter. I truly do. As a Stardew Valley fan, this is right up my alley. But with a lack of story, and criminally small overlay components within the game, I’ll honestly save my eyes for the time being. That being said, I do hope that Wild Forest continues to put some good work into this title, as it’s currently slated for a September 24th launch.

Gamer Social Club was provided an early-access copy of this demo for the purposes of this preview. This initial preview was played on PC (Steam).