TLDR: If you're looking for a short bit of fun with friends or on your own, Hoard is good in short bursts
Needing another decent multi-player game to keep the MJ crew occupied on Monday nights, I pegged this one as a candidate an patiently awaited my turn. While Hoard is an older titles, I hoped it would keep us entertained. It did - for a short amount of time. The game is incredibly simple and doesn't take long to conquer and is mildly fun. While it doesn't stand out amongst the indie gems, it does provide decent entertainment and you can probably find it incredibly cheap by now.
Presentation: The top-down presentation is nice enough to look at with color that pops and distinct enough that even with four players it's easy enough to keep track of who is who and what's trying to kill you. The game is simple with only a few buildings and enemies to worry about - magic towers, castles, knights, cities, thieves, wagons, windmills, crops and the occasional giant and princess. The simplicity keeps it from getting too bogged down buy also keeps it from standing out. Much like the sound effects and music, it is all very vanilla in its approach. Completely average across the board.
Story: As far as I can tell, none. Not in single or multiplayer games. You're a dragon. You burn things, collect loot, upgrade your powers, kill things, try not to get killed yourself - and that's it.
Gameplay: You're a dragon. You fly, burn, collect loot, deposit said loot. Repeat until the level is over. Of course there are some mechanics. As you collect loot you level up between four abilities - Speed (fly faster), Breath (Fire lasts longer and does more damage), Carrying Capacity (Carry more loot) and Armor (Survive more hits). All four are useful, but Speed and Breath seem the best to level early while Armor, though useful later, is almost an afterthought. If you survive long enough without dying, you gain a loot bonus (up to 3x) and dying resets it back to zero. In order to get the best rating on each level, keeping the streak going is very important. With more people, this becomes tougher an our crew, despite our best efforts, was unable to get the best rating on the final 4-player level.
The game does attempt to give some variety. If you don't burn everything in sight, building begin to level up. This produces a variety of effects: Magic Towers become stronger and shoot faster (but give out better loot), Knights become stronger and faster but princesses also appear that you can ransom for more loot, cities produce more gold, but also produce more archers and even thieves to take your loot. Windmills and farms produce bigger wagons and gold. You have to balance out the good with the bad and see if you can gather the most loot without dying along the way. The game also throws out a random powerup that anyone can collect that can increase speed, let you shoot fireballs instead of a breath weapon, grant a temporary shield and heal you.
The game features a variety of missions like Princess Rush (collect princesses for ransom), the difficult Hoard Mode (essentially a survival mode where enemies upgrade quickly and it becomes more of a SHMUP while you dodge everything in sight) and the generic Treasure Mode where you must collect as much as possible in the time limit. Even with a decent variety, the game gets repetitive fast and is only good for short bursts in my opinion.
Replayability: With the amount of modes and players and maps, at least the game had a decent amount of variety.
Presentation: 3/5
Story: n/a
Gameplay: 3/5
Replayability: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
