How to Raise a Dragon is a freeware online game dealing with dragons. Narrated in a journal-like fashion written by Magus X.R Quilliam, it follows the story of a dragon controlled by the player since its birth to its adulthood, as you learn facts about these well-known mythical creatures.
The game was created by Gregory Weir, best known by his previous work, The Majesty of Colors, and, like its predecessor, features several draconic behaviors and endings based on the player's actions, which can be sad, happy, inspiring, or bittersweet.
It can be played here
, though it requires a browser extension to emulate Flash. Not directly related to the How to Train Your Dragon franchise.
How to Raise a Dragon provides example of the following tropes:
- Alternate Character Interpretation: In-universe, the motivations of dragons who show kindness to humans are speculated on, with theories ranging from genuine kindness to loving humans the way humans love a pet.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Fire-breathing dragons are usually rather destructive, but the player can choose to make their own peaceful.
- Befriending the Enemy: Creating friendship with the dragon can feel like this, depending on how it's treated the village.
- Big Eater: As babies, dragons can already feed themselves and they possess quite an appetite.
- Big Bad: The dragon can choose to randomly massacre humans and destroy their settlement, rule over them as a brutal tyrant, or otherwise be evil.
- Big Good: The dragon can become a powerful force for good if it is kind to living beings weaker than it and chooses to be the Guardian of the human settlement.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- In the "Slavery" ending, the hero can offer his services to an evil dragon by giving it a flower (if it has plant-growing breath) or a bag of gold (if it has anything else). The hero will remain alive, but his life now belongs to the dragon.
- If the hero slays the dragon instead, the magnificent beast will die. But in death it will help contribute to the hero's legacy and ensure its own, as the hero's story honours both the slayer and the beast that gave its life.
- The "Stalemate" ending, particularly if the dragon was evil. The dragon is slain, but it deals a lethal blow to the hero in its final moments. While both dragon and dragonslayer are dead, the tale of their struggle becomes legendary.
- Breath Weapon: According to the journal, the dragon develops its breath during teenagehood by consuming certain items that will allow it to expel whatever breath the player desires to have. Breaths vary, including the classical firebreath, a healing mist expelled from the dragon's nostrils, and a magical water-based breath that allows plants to grow and be green and beautiful. If the player does not eat any of the items required and escapes using the sewer of the wizard's castle, the dragon will lack a breath weapon, which is explained by the journal as a lack of adequate nutrition.
- Bullying a Dragon: Literal example when the newborn dragon is captured and kept as a pet by a wizard. The journal states that keeping a dragon as a pet is unwise because they always grow too intelligent and powerful to be held captive, and the best-case scenario is that they allow the humans who kept them to live. The second phase has the dragon escape its cage, and the player has the option of killing the wizard who trapped them.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Averted. The game points out that a dragon's color is based on what it ate as a hatchling and is unrelated to its powers or personality.
- Dragon Tamer: The dragon is captured by a wizard when young, and raised as a pet. In the second phase, the dragon breaks out of the cage, and a simple escape is generally considered a merciful option. At this time, the dragon also obtains a Breath Weapon that can be used on the wizard to varying effects.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Can happen if the player, as a hero, slays the dragon in its lair with a simple bow and arrow.
- The Dog Bites Back: As a newborn, the dragon is trapped by a wizard. In their adolescent phase, after escaping, the player has the option of killing the wizard and taking their revenge.
- Downer Ending: The bad endings are those where you play as an evil dragon, then get killed while playing as the hero, or conversely, play as a benevolent dragon and have your hero kill it.
- Everything's Deader with Zombies: If the dragon becomes a Healer, it can use its powers to bring the dead back to life.
- Extreme Omnivore: The dragon can eat certain objects during teenagehood which are meant to allow it to develop its own breath powers. Candles, trees and magical fungi are among them.
- Glory Seeker: A potential motivation for the hero. The narrator notes that the usually neutral "Watcher" dragons are often hunted by heroes concerned with personal fame, over protecting people or defeating evil.
- Good Powers, Bad People: While dragons with breath powers such as the healing mist and the watery breath are generally benevolent, you can either use the former to create a zombie army at your service or the later to wreak havoc upon humans by becoming a rampaging eco-terrorist.
- Green Thumb: Should you give the dragon a magical, plant-based breath during its youth it will develop powers like this. You can use it either to help humans in times of famine and protect the forest or to be a downright eco-terrorist.
- The Hero Dies: It's entirely possible to be killed by the dragon while playing as the hero, should you choose to slay it. Alternatively, you may achieve a Mutual Kill with it.
- High Fantasy: The setting is somewhat reminiscent of Dungeons & Dragons, with a dragon roaming around, a wizard keeping it as a pet for some time, and a hero who can slay it with a bow and arrow.
- Interspecies Friendship: The hero can befriend a benevolent dragon by giving it a flower (if it has plant-growing breath) or a bag of gold (if it has anything else). The narration for this ending points out that such a bond tends to be extraordinarily powerful, and those who attain it often go on to fulfill great deeds.
- Lightning Bruiser: As an adult, the dragon is so big that humans only come up to its knee. And it moves faster than in the previous phases.
- Multiple Endings: The dragon can obtain either fire, healing, or plant breath, or no Breath Weapon at all, and use its powers for good, evil, or simply mind its own business. Then, the hero can befriend a benevolent one, offer gold to an evil one to become its servant, slay it with a bow and arrow, or get killed in combat.
- Mutual Kill: The hero can slay the dragon while sustaining mortal wounds, resulting in the "Stalemate" ending.
- Mysterious Watcher: If the dragon leaves the human settlement alone and lairs on the cliffside, the narrator refers to it as a "Watcher" dragon, and notes that they seem content to observe human civilization for their own purposes.
- No "Arc" in "Archery": Any arrows shot by the hero fly in a straight line, without arcing or dropping.
- Our Dragons Are Different: While the player dragon itself strongly resembles a common European Dragon, the author has put his own take on the creature. To start, dragon hatchlings can already look for themselves and develop the color of their scales by eating certain items. Dragons develop their Breath Weapon in teenagehood and can be either good, evil or neutral in adulthood. Baby dragons also start walking quadrupedally, but seemingly shift to bipedalism during teenagehood.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The undead humans brought back by the Healer dragon aren't aggressive and seem to coexist peacefully with the humans.
- Pet the Dog: If the adolescent dragon chooses to forgive and heal the bedridden wizard who captured them as a hatchling, the wizard frees them out of gratitude.
- Stronger with Age: The dragon starts out as a defenseless hatchling, then an adolescent capable of double-jumping, then an adult who is Nigh-Invulnerable, can fly, and if you found them, breath powers.
- Video Game Caring Potential: A few examples pop up. Sometimes, it depends on whatever kind of breath you've gotten:
- At the end of the hatchling stage, the baby dragon is captured by a wizard and brought to his castle. After it grows up as a teenager and discovers the wizard restraining it has gone sick and is bedridden, you can choose to be sympathetic toward him and use the healing breath on him to cure him, or simply leave him alone to his fate.
- At the beginning of the adult stage, the player will come across a mortally-wounded deer lying on the forest. If you have healing breath, you can help it to recover. If you possess plant breath, you can cover its body with soft flowers and grasses to give it a proper burial.
- The humans. You can either watch over them either as a faithful guardian or as a lone watcher in the mountains. Or simply, you may never pay any attention to them after all. If you have plant breath, you can use it to improve their crops and save them from starvation.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Also depends on whatever breath you may possess at times...
- You can use your fiery breath to kill the bedridden, sick wizard who captured you as a hatchling. It also lets you roast alive the poor wounded deer at the start of the adult level.
- The methods on which you kill humans and cause destruction are rather... creative. You can fry them alive with fire breath and burn down their homes, unleash Gaia's Vengeance on them and create large, destructive out of control trees that grow in their homes, kill them and resurrect them as zombies with your healing breath... Or more easily, you can crush them underfoot, or simply make a snack of those tasty, scared villagers.
- Zombie Apocalypse: A dragon with healing breath can raise the dead. You can go around killing a bunch of people, then turn them into zombies. However, it's not THAT apocalyptic, as the zombies are not aggressive or dangerous to humans.
