We’re big fans of Looney Labs round these parts. There’s something refreshing about simple fun to play card games. It also doesn’t hurt that the company obviously loves what it does, and that love bleeds through to all the products they release.

Primarily known for their line of Fluxx games (we’ve reviewed both Martian Fluxx and Pirate Fluxx here before) they made waves this year with their Back to the Future card game which actually just won an award at Origins and is based on their inventive Chrononauts game system.

Seven Dragons is completely different from all those other games however. Featuring big beautiful artwork and a simple game mechanic, it’s low price point makes is a perfect inclusion in just about every game collection.

So, with that said, let’s play some Seven Dragons!

The first thing to note about Seven Dragons is of course the beautiful artwork of the dragons themselves done by brilliant fantasy artist Larry Elmore. If you’ve ever read a Dungeons and Dragons or fantasy novel in your time you’ve probably seen his work. Each color dragon has it’s own vibe and is completely distinct from the others and really serves to give the game it’s personality. Top notch stuff there.

The point of Seven Dragons is to create a connection of, you guessed it, 7 dragons of your color together. At the beginning of the game each player is dealt a goal card face down that has a picture of one of the colored dragons on it that they keep secret. Each person will have a different color and will work to connect that color dragon and stop the others over the course of the game.

The cards are divided up in different ways, some with one big picture of a single dragon or cut up in 2-3-4 parts with different colors on it. To play a card you simply need to line it up against a card on the table with a matching color next to it. The picture below is an example of this chaining. In cards 1-2 the black dragons line up, in 2-3 it’s the red one, 3-4 it’s the blue. Not all the adjacent dragons need to match, only one to be a valid card (bonus cards can be drawn if you matching multiple cards). Cards can be placed next to or on top of each other, and can only be rotated 180 degrees so it always stays as a grid, no turning cards sideways.

So each player has a hand of cards and play just goes around the table with players drawing a card then playing one, trying to create these connections and block others. Sprinkled through the deck are action cards that you can play at any time that let you do things like switch goals with someone, have everyone at the table rotate their goal, trade hands, move cards around of remove a card from the table altogether. As you can probably guess these action cards can really mess you up if someone changes goals with you when you’re 1 dragon away from winning, so it’s important to try and keep your goal a secret.

The really interesting mechanic here is the silver dragon starter card (not pictured). When initially placed in the center of the table it’s all the dragons at once, a wild card. But as the game progresses it changes colors and people play those action cards, because in addition to the action printed on the card there’s also a dragon color. The silver dragon becomes the color of whatever action card is on top of the discard pile. This is huge since many times the victory comes from using that silver dragon to chain together your color, so changing his color can have a huge effect on the playfield.

It’s a pretty simple game, usually taking around 10 minutes or so to play a single round. It’s great for pre-game night action, that post DnD relaxing finisher or killing time at a con waiting in line (just like the ever-popular Zombie Dice). One of the really nice things about Seven Dragons (and Looney Labs in general) is their inclusion of simplified rulesets for younger kids, which lets everyone get in on the action. Rules for ages 3-4, 5-6 and 6+ are included in addition to the standard rules. It offers great variety and is a good way for parents to game with their kids and not have to simplify rules on the fly.

The game itself is mostly a re-skin of another Looney Labs game called Aquarius. The goal cards, the connections, the card layouts were all the same. The biggest and coolest difference is the silver dragon. There are some minor differences but if you own that game already just know that Seven Dragons isn’t very different. For me the artwork of Larry Elmore would be enough to plunk down the cash, and I personally love the change of starting with the everchanging silver dragon card.

Easily worth the price of admission!