Dragon Trainer (2025)
‘Dragon Trainer’ is a game designed for my Game Design class at the University of Michigan - Flint. The idea was to design our own game based on a real-life game. Dragon Trainer has a format like Monopoly, collecting spaces and trying to move around the board, winning money or risking losing it. But the game includes the card aspect of Machi Koro, where once you unlock a space, you flip a card that resembles that space. Once all the cards you have are flipped, you win!
The game's theme is based on ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ (2010) because not only do I love this franchise, but there are many video game adaptations rather than physical ones. By the time I designed this game based on Monopoly, developers had managed to release a ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ Monopoly, but more like the actual game itself.
Game Packaging Design
Rules of ‘Dragon Trainer’
Each player begins with 10 runes and seven cards facing down
Roll a dice to determine who plays first (highest number)
The player, in turn, rolls the dice and moves around the board (begin your journey from Berk)
Land on dragons and see if you can “buy” them for your team. (place the runes into the treasure in the middle guarded by the “Guardian Dragon”)
Once you buy a specific dragon for that type of class, flip the card over with the same symbol the dragon has and put a token of yours to let them know you own that dragon
a.That dragon is from that class, so you flip the card over to say you “found” that dragon
If you land on an Alpha, roll an odd number to determine your chances:
a.Succeed, win 2 runes from the Guardian Dragon
b.Fail, pay 2 runes to the Guardian Dragon in the middle
Landing on a dragon hunter’s spot, you have three chances to roll a six or pay a toll to get free (place toll into the treasure)
If you land on a treasure chest spot, pick up a treasure card
a.If there is a certain number of runes on a card, the Guardian Dragon will grant you said amount of runes to increase your money from the middle of the board
b.If the chest is empty, you earn no runes from the Guardian
If opposing players land on your dragon’s spot, they pay a specific amount of runes to that player
a.If you can not pay the player runes, you will have to give up a dragon and earn your runes back from the Guardian Dragon to pay them off
Reach Berk safely and earn five runes
11. Continue around the board until you get your seven different class dragons.