Recent reviews by Arcaryx

DESPITE THE POSITIVE REVIEW, I WOULD STRONGLY RECOMMEND WAITING BEFORE PURCHASING!

I am sorry if this review is a bit long, I just feel like a lot of people need the full story. While I am sure I didn't get every fact correct I did my best to summarize my personal research and understanding of the situation. If you only want my experience playing the game, scroll down to My Experience.

TLDR at the end
I'm going to start off by saying that this game is NOT a scam. This game is one person sitting down and deciding they want a dragon-based survival game. No such game existed at the time, so they set out on a journey to create one.

They started out with some web programming experience and hopped around from game engine to game engine before deciding on Unreal. After some researching and online help, a game was created named Day of Dragons, however, it was nothing more than some networking code, placeholder assets and a dream. The developer decided (with the advice of some friends) that he should create a Kickstarter to get his first three custom assets for the game, being the Fire Dragon, Fire Wyvern and Plasma Dragon models. He set the Kickstarter goal at $12,000 which he believed would be enough to purchase and animate these three models. The last thing he expected was the Kickstarter to go well over $500,000 thanks to lots of help from Anthomnia and the survival game community.

The developer saw a need to support the Kickstarter growth but didn't know what to offer. He decided to think up some cool dragon designs and offer them as stretch goals. Some people disliked this, but many were fine with the justification of them being playable in Singleplayer and having the ability to nest anyone in as them. With the conclusion of the Kickstarter, a Youtuber by the name of IGP (Indie Game Promoter if I am not mistaken, which seems a little ironic in this case) decided to take a closer look at the game and ask all the questions that were never really answered.

While researching about the game for a video, IGP noticed that there was lots of evidence suggesting that the developer lacks experience and might not be completely honest about some things, such as development time and programming experience. Along with some other users, he began asking questions the developer did not want to answer. After receiving what seems to be a request to stop asking questions, he went ahead with the information he and other users gathered and published a video. He was offered a beta key at one point, however, he never replied and it was given to another Content Creator.

With the drop of this video, thousands of users began frantically wondering "Is this game a scam?" to which the developer only responded by dodging most of the questions and continuing to work. Lots of the current moderators stepped in and began banning people who asked the same questions to the point it became spam or in a rude/aggressive way. The lack of experience and information allowed this event to snowball for days straight, and it only began to die down as the developer continued to post new concepts, sounds and updates.

In the time up to Early Access, the developer hired both Jia Hao[www.artofjiahao.com] and the sound designer from Subnautica, Simon Chylinski. He also hired Rey Fernandez Jr.[www.reyfernandezjr.com] to write some music, which sounds wonderful in my opinion and has caught plenty of players on the main menu screen just listening for a while. These are all professionals who are hired for sound and models, although the models are not going to be implemented until the animator that the developer plans to hire is available early 2020 (January from what I remember). With new concepts and sounds being added every few days, the people crying out "scam, scam!" seemed fewer and fewer, although the original questions all seemed to have converged into one main question: Is the developer capable of keeping his promises?

A few weeks ago, combat was added in. It was very bug ridden, even to the point of the Plasma Dragon's shots exploding in its own mouth. Lots of us beta testers worked for hours to report as many bugs as possible, most of which are now patched. Many people found growing a dragon, fighting or laying around chatting boring with no real objective, so we rarely had more than 50 beta testers online at once. We experienced almost no lag and had lots of fun, although we had access to the infinite food corpses that have been recently re-added.

Finally, with the arrival of Early Access fast approaching, the developer worked hard to patch as many bugs as possible and made a desperate attempt to get dragon saving (server persistence) in before EA. Ultimately, I'm sure the developer would have loved to have a few extra weeks to make some more additions (heard something about a custom map?) and to ensure persistence is working properly.

On the day of EA release, Jao the hamster loving developer was flooded with people eager to play. He delayed a few hours before finally dropping the patch without persistence. With this EA patch he also increased growth timers and removed the infinite feeding corpses. It was a bit of a nightmare.

Everyone rushed into EA, tons of Kickstarter users that have been waiting months and plenty of new steam users watching the release. First thing that immediately became apparent is the game breaking lag that began appearing above 70 players. I don't think the cause is known but I highly suspect it will be found and fixed soon. After that some people were unable to hatch from their egg, while everyone was struggling to survive due to having no food sources other than babies. It was nothing but chaos, lag and spawnkilling.

Tons of people immediately began bashing the game for being unplayable, leaving a bad review before refunding with under 2 hours of playtime. Many of the Kickstarter users went back to screaming "scam, scam!" and someone even went so far as to rename their account and impersonate a current moderator, leaving a bad review in their name which for some reason Jao responded to (lack of PR experience really showing here).

I have slowly watched as the reviews went from 19% positive to 53% positive, which will likely continue to climb as many of the launch day issues have been fixed and everyone who was busy enjoying the game is now taking the time to write out their review. Jao is continuing to work on updates and I eagerly await the new models and map!

TLDR Brand new developer decides to make dragon game. Creates Kickstarter looking for a few thousand to get some custom dragon models and animations but gets $500k instead. Some Youtubers support while others believe it is a scam. Developer has no PR experience but keeps showing new stuff which eventually quiets everyone down. Steady updating until EA, where food sources are removed and way more players join which leads to unplayable lag. Lots of reviewbombing occurs while the developer continues working on bugfixes and updates. Exciting things to come, although inexperience is his biggest challenge.


I received a message from a friend informing me that this game exists on Kickstarter and is similar to The Isle (a dinosaur survival game). I backed for a beta key and have watched this game from day one alpha testing to how it is now. I am a plasma main (50+ hours on plasma alone) and had no difficulty growing up without a group on EA release. I really enjoy the game, although the lag is really annoying for me and currently is my biggest problem with the game.

I have had as much fun in DoD as The Isle and can't wait to see where it goes from here. [EDIT] I was a moderator for a while until Jao had his break down where I resigned. I still fully support the game and the staff team, although Jao needs to take a few steps back and let people experienced with PR put out all the fires he started.

I loved the game back when it had tiers, TX-1 and other fun things like this. Now all the changes make it harder to play and degrade the value of good design. The new guns are not that fun but I see a ton of potental in this game. Its free after all :P