Adventure Gamers has reviewed the recently released genre mix Golden Treasure: The Great Green:

Golden Treasure: The Great Green

I’ll be honest: I’m not super into dragons. I love fantasy storytelling but dragons never caught my fancy – from Smaug to Drogon to Paarthurnax, these creatures that seem to light up people’s faces with awe never quite grabbed my attention. (Actually, that isn’t quite true, as I love non-traditional takes on dragons like that of the Panzer Dragoon series). Nothing wrong with them, don’t get me wrong, but dragons always felt to me like they belonged airbrushed on the side of vans or on Ren Faire merchandise rather than something to take seriously.

So I went into Dreaming Door Studios’ freshman effort Golden Treasure: The Great Green with a little bit of trepidation, not because it looked bad – far from it – but because it took dragons and moved them from the sidelines (the villains, the sidekicks, the pets) to smack dab in the center. In Golden Treasure you don’t just play as a dragon, the game is a veritable dragon lifestyle simulator, a mashup of open world role-playing and survival mechanics in the skin of an illustrated text adventure or visual novel. Thankfully, it's done well enough that my initial eye rolls at the subject matter soon melted into genuine appreciation and hunger to learn more about these dragons, their history, and their ways. Despite a few hiccups (some bigger than others), it molds a compelling world and tells a complex tale of an ancient, rigid draconic society and its evolving relationship with a changing world when faced with unfamiliar forces.

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It certainly comes with caveats, but the stuff that succeeds in Golden Treasure: The Great Green is really wonderful. Dreaming Door has created a rich world full of intrigue and beauty, with a story that balances its linear and non-linear aspects in a strongly personalized yet carefully authored fantasy tale that explores its ideas with maturity and grace. I was ready to scoff at “Cliche Dragon Simulator 2019,” but instead found a hybrid adventure that will stick with me for some time, and perhaps even compel me to spend a little more time appreciating the natural world around me.

Score: 3.5/5

The adventure RPG Golden Treasure: The Great Green will be released on June 17:

The Sun is your Father. The Earth is your Mother. All Beings are your Prey.

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Golden Treasure: The Great Green is a hand-painted game about choices, survival, and life as a non-human being. Players take on the role of a dragon and must survive the tender and dangerous years of childhood, forging a path to maturity in the beautiful and deadly world of Earth in the Bronze Age.

To survive, you must hunt prey, fight other dragons for dominance, plunder underground labyrinths for treasures, explore the far corners of the wilderness and, most importantly, grow and learn about the Great Green and its many inhabitants, from birds and beasts to ancient spirits. If you become wise and powerful enough, you may just change the history of our world and the fate of dragonkind.

Features:

• Over 100 hand-painted scenes
• Three massive open-world areas to explore
• Thousands of choices and several completely distinct endings
• Full combat system with 70+ opponents and dozens of special abilities
• Four elemental paths of enlightenment to master
• Original 3-phase hunting system; stalk, pursue, and destroy your prey
• First-person labyrinths to explore, each with its own unique story and treasures
• Dozens of unique artifacts and ancient secrets to discover

The free demo version includes the entirety of the Prologue and Part 1 of the game, including hours of original gameplay. Permanent unlockables (Tarot Cards, Animal Mastery and Artifacts) will be carried over into the full game.