Dragon Putt is an adorable iOS game where you get to play a game similar to mini-golf, but with adorable dragons as the golf bat and lots of crazy courses, bonuses, upgrades, achievements, events and much more.
The game can be played in normal mode or in AR. However, the AR mode is only available in the Single-player mode, not for the Multiplayer nor the Course Builder. It would surely be nice playing other people’s custom tracks in AR, not just in Normal mode.
What is Dragon Putt?
Dragon Putt plays like a mini-golf game. The player controls a dragon character. He needs to make the dragon hit the ball so it reaches the hole at the end of each course.
You start with a red dragon called Rongert and you unlock more dragons by purchasing them using coins and eggs. There are three types of eggs, each dragon has a different price tag attached to it. Furthermore, each dragon comes with its own unique abilities and can be upgraded improve its stats. For example, a magnet ability increase the distance from which the coins are collected. Charlie Puddle is a winter dragon and he comes with +20% freeze obstacles ability which freezes moving obstacles with a tap. You can upgrade this ability to make the freeze last longer.
The game has a dedicated screen where you can see all the available dragons, purchase, upgrade and even take them for a test drive to see how they play in practice—cool stuff!
Dragon Putt features a large variety of crazy tracks. Some of them have obstacles, curves and other kinds of tricks to make it harder for you to put the ball into the hole. The being said, the game isn’t hard. However, once you unlock the multiplayer, you will be competing against other players for the highest score in 7 different tracks. There you’ll need to perform at your best and try to maximize your score, so every wrong hit can cause you to lose the first place.
Game Controls in AR
I did have an issue with the controls in AR. The aiming felt really stiff. The map itself is big and not resizable. Furthermore, unlike the Normal mode, the track doesn’t auto rotate itself. I found myself needing to move to a certain location, but sometimes due to the large size of the track, I just couldn’t be in a specific area. Rotating the dragon from that position felt really awkward.
I think that the ideal mechanic should be that the dragon rotates with the player but this could undermine the gameplay experience for those playing the game in a small setting.
I still think that the game plays well in third-person and I wouldn’t want to play it in the first person perspective at all. All its beauty lies in the ability to see the track, all the items and foresee the trajectory of the ball.
Overall, I found the controls to be stiff and not optimal for AR. Playing the game in Normal mode felt much better.
Game Modes
What I loved about Dragon Putt is that it’s very rich in content and you always have something to do. This includes daily challenges, achievements, daily rewards, event–all will reward you with valuable loot.
Aside from that, the game feature several game modes:
- Single Player: progress through a wide selection of tracks while unlocking other games modes, rewards, and dragons as you go.
- Multiplayer: Compete against other players at the same level by completing 7 tracks and try to beat the other players’ score (it’s not a PvP match, you played separately from the other players).
- Endless Mode: Try to reach the longest distance in a challanging track full of obstacles and good loot of course.
- Course Builder: Here you can build your own course, share it with other people and play other user’s courses.
- Dragons AR: This is a mode where you can place dragons in the real world, move them and animate them.
As you can see, there is plenty of things to do in Dragon Putt. It’s a very generous offering for a free-to-play game, but as for any F2P mobile game, you have a limited amount of times that you can play straight. Hearts are the in-game currency and you won’t be able to play without them. You can buy 6 hearths for 4500 coins or wait until they replenish automatically over time.
A few words about the graphics. Dragon Putt features lively vibrant visuals but I wasn’t impressed with the graphics quality, The game still looks solid due to the high number of objects in the level and their animation, the dynamic background, and the interesting terrain design.
Conclusion
Dragon Putt is definitely a content-rich game and there is plenty of things to do once you start playing it. You can log-in every day and always find something to do.
The AR mode didn’t provide me with a good gameplay experience. Having a wide selection of courses, each one with its own size and not having an option to resize the course or rotate it just made things worse. The entire gameplay experience felt uncomfortable in AR.I found myself going back to play the regular mode just so I can share more information about this game in the review. I don’t mind spending time on hard games, but this the AR experience was so annoying the I needed to take a break. Yes, I have a relatively small place, but it was sufficient for 99% of the ARKit games that I played, so is it my fault?
The non-AR version of the game had a good flow, but I found that the game is too easy for me and I felt like even with all the diversity in each track it was more or less the same experience.
I did enjoy unlocking new dragons, obtaining rewards and finishing achievements as I play. The Endless mode was fun and can pose some good challenge (I failed after around 90 meters, stupid mistake, I know I can do better than that).
Overall, I recommend the game for those of you who love golf games because the gameplay is quite similar The AR mode might be OK if you have a relatively large space and you don’t mind the awkward controls. Overall, a good game, less in AR, unfortunately.