Sometimes it's just too much work to be good. You know, all that chivalry nonsense, rescuing the maiden - whateeeever. No, sometimes you just want to be the badass, and what could be more badass than a friggin' dragon? Hoard, a brand new strategy game from indie studio Big Sandwich Games puts you in the role of the winged beast and tasks you with; well, with doing dragon stuff - burning villages, capturing princesses and looting. The result? An absolutely fun, engaging and addictive strategy experience that's hindered by a thin package and a few annoying bugs that pop up at all the worst times.

There's no real progression to Hoard, there's no campaign or story. Your only objective is to amass a giant stockpile of treasure through the previously mentioned “dragon stuff.” As you've probably already guessed by now, Hoard isn't the most complex game, but that's really a major part of its charm. Most battles take around five to ten minutes tops, and there's enough customization options to easily get into the “one more match” syndrome and find yourself playing for hours on end.

That's not to say though that Hoard is a repetitive endeavor though. Your objective may be simple, but just how you do it is up to you. Controlling your dragon, you'll pretty much find treasure at every turn, burning through villages usually nets the most results, but you're also free to get the goods by other means, like kidnapping princesses and fending off soldiers looking to make a name for yourself by slaying you. If you're really good, you can intimidate an entire town enough to fearing you enough to just bring the loot to you in fear of another attack.

"The game does feature leader boards, which are addicting to try to top..."

Though the quick multiplayer skirmishes are great for a jump in, jump out type game, it does have its downfalls. Every piece of loot you bring back to your nest goes towards experience points that you can use to level up your dragon in several key areas. Sounds great right? Except for the fact that all of these experience points and leveling are whipped clear away at the start of the next game. Not allowing these stats to carry over discourages a lot of replayability, and almost guarantees that the game won't see as big of a dedicated fan base as it probably should. The game does feature leader boards, which are addicting to try to top, but they too are limiting thanks to the fact that they're all based on single game statistics.

The PC version of the game can be played with either a gamepad or the standard keyboard and mouse combo. As I usually do with most PC games, I tried the latter first and everything was going well until my dragon decided that it didn't like it anymore and started flying everyway but the way I wanted it to go. Switching over to an Xbox 360 controller solved this for a bit, but it seemed to pop up a few other bugs that all but crippled the game.

"...the game just crashed multiple times..."

In truth, Hoard is a game that runs full steam ahead, until it's stopped dead in its tracks by a series of unfortunate bugs. Play for long enough and you're sure to find a series of debug text randomly sprawled across the screen. Even worse, the game just crashed multiple times, leading to what you can imagine would be a frustrating experience. Hopefully these bugs will all be fixed via a future title update.

On the presentation side, there's not much to Hoard that you don't already expect. Fairy tale inspired visuals dot a board game style world. Its nothing special, but it tends to do the job it needs to. It's just a shame that you always feel like you're missing out on a ton of cool animations and visuals that could have easily been implemented.

Hoard isn't a deep game that you'll spend hours digging in to; it's a quick and fun game that you'll spend hours playing what you think is your last game. Yes, it's addictive, and yes it's fun to be a badass dragon, but the game loses it's steam quickly thanks to a series of game crippling bugs that does everything from show debug text to bringing the entire game to a screeching halt. When the developers at Big Sandwich games release the inevitable patch, Hoard will be an instant recommendation, but for now it's best to be cautious.