Hello!

This week’s game is DragonVale – a smash-hit resource management and nurturing game from Backflip Studios. It’s available for free on iOS.

How does it work?

Breed and nurture dragons to build a beautiful park for your visitors! You’ve got a floating island in the sky that is just begging for dragons. You can incubate different types of egg to make different types of dragons: earth, fire, plant, water, ash (released in an update last week), and many more. Dragons live in special habitats, need to you to feed them from time to time, and can be cross-bred to make new types of dragon. You earn coins, an in-game currency, by attracting people to your park. Coins can be spent on dragon eggs, habitats, buildings and decorations, or growing dragon food. The more numerous and interesting the dragons, and the more beautifully-decorated your park, the more people will visit and the more coins you will earn and the faster you will level up. Levelling-up unlocks new dragons, new items, and new challenges.

How does it make money?

There are two types of in-app purchase available. You can buy extra dragon food to help level-up your dragons, which makes them more appealing to visitors. And you can buy extra gems, which are used for speeding up things like dragon incubation.

Why is this game particularly interesting?

DragonVale is an extraordinary freemium success story. It was released a year ago, and has never been out of the top-grossing app charts in the US – in fact, it has never been lower the #13 in the list, and is usually in the top 5. That means it has generated many millions of dollars for Backflip Studios, despite being free to download.

Give DragonVale a try when you have 10 minutes spare – I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Cheers,

Todd

P.S. To get previous GOTWs, or to add or remove names from the list, just send me a mail.