If there's one thing that Hoard makes clear, it's that dragons are jerks. Big mean jerks who will burn down a village and kidnap a princess just to get their claws on some gold. The debut title from Big Sandwich Games, Hoard blends the gameplay of classic arcade games with the structure of a board game. The result is a unique and addictive experience that, while lacking a little in variety, will help unleash your inner, fire-breathing jerk.

The game was released on the PlayStation Network last November, but comes to Steam today for the sale price of $7.50, with four-packs available for $27 if you'd like to get your friends into the game for some co-op or multiplayer. The game also supports Steamworks, so one purchase will get the game on your PC and Mac systems. Here's what we thought of the game.

At first, Hoard feels quite a bit like a twin stick shooter, adjusted for the keyboard. You control your dragon with the WASD keys and shoot fire with the mouse. But instead of fighting off swarms of enemies, you'll be terrorizing towns. Burning down castles, crops, and carts will give you gold, which you can then store in your home base. The main mode in the game centers around gathering as much gold as possible within a 10-minute period.

Hoard pc*, Release Date: now

now MSRP: $9.99 (on sale today for $7.50) Official site * = platform reviewed

When you burn down a structure it will slowly respawn, and the longer you leave it, the larger it'll grow. Eventually it will spawn defenses like archers and knights that will attack you unless you can burn it down. Oh, and you'll also have to compete with other dragons who are just as gold-hungry as you. There are other obstacles as well, like randomly spawning and incredibly tough giants, as well as magic towers that will shoot you with beams of light but drop valuable gems when defeated. You can also kidnap princesses and hold them for ransom.

Your dragon has limitations, however. It can only hold a certain amount of gold at a time, for instance, so you'll constantly have to go back and drop off gold at your home base. It also has limited health. If your health drops down to zero you'll automatically be sent to your base where your health will regenerate but your gold will remain wherever you were killed, and it can be picked up by any of the other dragons on the field. Over the course of each 10-minute stage you'll be able to improve these abilities via a basic RPG-style progression system. You'll earn points that can be assigned to various abilities, and by the end of the game your dragon will be significantly improved compared to when you began.

What this all amounts to is a game with an incredible back-and-forth dynamic. Playing against other dragons—whether they're computer-controlled or online opponents—is both fun and frustrating. You can steal other players' gold or even their kidnapped princesses, but of course they can do the same to you. Watching as someone steals your gold while you sit and wait for your health to recharge is tough, but it only makes you want to get revenge that much more. And with multiple building types and upgradeable abilities, there are plenty of different strategies you can use.

There are a few other game modes as well, including one where the goal is to be the first to kidnap 15 princesses, and a survival mode where you don't collect gold, but instead try to stay alive for as long as possible. But there are fewer maps for these modes, and they're simply not as interesting as the main gold hoarding mode.

If there's one complaint that can be made about the game it's that it could use some variety. While the large number of maps available means that each stage plays a little bit differently, you're still essentially doing the same thing every time. A few map-specific obstacles would go along way toward spicing things up. And the same goes for the visuals. The board game look is adorable, complete with dragons and characters that look like moving miniatures, but it doesn't change at all from stage to stage. Everything always looks the same.

But when the core gameplay is so solid, it's easy to look past all this. Hoard possesses that rare quality that makes it a great multiplayer experience. And since the game has some pretty solid AI, it's also very enjoyable as a single-player game. The extra game modes may leave something to be desired, and the lack of visual variety is disappointing, but it doesn't hurt the overall experience. Hoard has that "one more game" hook that will keep you scorching villages for hours on end.

The majority of this review was taken from the PS3 original, but the PC version does add a night mode and an ice tile set. It's not a ton of new content, but the PC version works across multiple platforms, is cheaper than the PlayStation Network original, and features support for both mouse and keyboard and gamepads. Hoard's designer, Tyler Sigman, also created the wonderful board game Crows, and we're looking forward to seeing what else he's working on. This is a fun, inexpensive game that can now find a new audience.

We're going to go ahead and keep the original verdict.

Verdict: Buy