The royal wedding is about to commence, so you send your heir on a quest to gather the best and finest gifts from the Dragon Market! Run and jump from boat to boat and you sail to collect all of the best treasures before your rivals!

What is Dragon Market? 

Dragon Market is a fun puzzle game from Blue Orange Games where you will maneuver your player pawn onto boats to move around a river to pick up items you need to complete your objective cards. 

Be the first player to complete the required number of objective cards to win the game.  

How do you play?

Each player will start on their pontoon in one of the corners of the game board. Players will take turns placing boats on the board in locations they would like the boats to start. 

Then the items are placed on the empty spaces on each boat at random with both identical item tokens staying together. 

Players will then draw a merchandise card showing them the four items that they must collect and bring back to their dock. 

On your turn, you will roll the two dice to determine how many actions you will take. 

These actions are:

Slide a Boat: Move a boat any number of unoccupied spaces either forward or backward. You may not move the boat sideways.

Rotate a Boat: holding onto the sailor, rotate the boat clockwise or counter clockwise 90 degrees through unoccupied spaces. If your boat would hit another boat, you may not rotate the boat.

Move Your Player Pawn: Move your figure from space to space from your pontoon onto the boats. If a sailor is in a spot you may not move your figure onto that spot. When you move your sailor onto a token that is also on your merchandise card you may pick it up.

If a player uses all of their actions then their turn is over. However, a play may choose to not use all of their actions. Any unspent actions can be banked for a later turn. Take coins equal to the number of unspent actions. On future turns, you may use up to two of these banked actions to take additional actions.

Once you have all of the items on your objective card you much return to your pontoon space in the corner of the board. Once you successfully navigate back, you immediately complete your merchandise card and can draw another. 

The first player to complete two objective cards win the game.

What do we think?

One of our favorite family games is Labyrinth. It’s this puzzle game where you slide these pathway pieces to move and navigate your player pawn to specific items. There’s always this tricky balance of trying to keep track of what pathway you need and how to move the columns and rows in such a way that you open up a road for yourself while not helping your opponents. 

Dragon Market gives off some serious Labyrinth vibes and in many ways I think I actually prefer Dragon Market more. 

For one the game looks very beautiful all set up. As per their usual arrangement, Blue Orange Games has made another stunning game that invites you to play it by coming stocked with wonderful wooden and coardboard pieces that are brightly colored and exciting to view. 

There’s a really fun push and pull in this puzzle what I enjoy. Each time I move a boat to help me, I might also be creating a problem for my opponent who perhaps needed that boat where it was. Or alternatively—because the merchandise cards are public knowledge and everyone knows what everyone else is going for—you might realize that if you move the boats one way you are actually helping your opponents so you need to find a different way to get what you want so you don’t make it too easy on them. 

One of my favorite aspects of Dragon Market is found in its simplicity. It is easy to move things here. There are no annoying tracks or finicky path pieces that you much push and slide around like you find in Labyrinth. The boats simply glide effortlessly across the board and are easily rotated and moved around.

It is important that you always pay attention that your boat is occupying the three spaces each boat must occupy, this helps all players better visualize what actions, specifically rotations, will be possible. Outside of that, Dragon Market is a very clean game that is easy for younger players to play, visualize, and grasp.

An element that I found nice was that, while the puzzle is tricky, it never felt punishing. The minimum actions anyone can get is 6 and even with just 6 I always felt that I was able to utilize them in a way that helped me progress towards completing my merchandise card. Even on games where I was really boxed in by boats, I was able to hop around and find some space to maneuver.

In fact, we find one of the best elements of the game is that its pretty hard to sabotage another player. Even when we tried to slow the other down, it didn’t really work and still cost us valuable actions, more hurting ourselves than the other. From a family perspective, I like that you can’t gang up and box someone out too terribly and that even when you try, they still have options at their disposal.

Luck Elements

Inherently with any game involving dice, you will have a bit of luck. Sometimes it may seem like everyone else is rolling 7s, and 8s for their actions and your stuck with 6 and that is certainly a disappointing element for that unlucky roller. This is easily manageable by just making a house rule of 7 actions each turn. We’ve done this and it works just fine. Whatever makes you happy. 

There is also a bit of luck involved in what items you need to collect and where they are placed on the boats. For instance, I was able to come from behind and snatch victory simply because I drew a card where all four of the items just so happened to be on the two boats beside my pontoon. One simple turn of 7 actions and I claimed victory! It can also happen in the reverse as well. An unlucky card draw can have you needing to travel all over the board to collect items with no easy way to do so. 

Dragon Market is definitely more difficult the more players you have. When playing with two, you have less of a chance of boats that you need getting moved if your opponent is focused elsewhere. With a full four players, the boats are constantly moving, shifting, and creating little puzzles in-and-of themselves to solve as you are all moving them back and forth, in and out of each others’ way. 

Dragon Market also comes with an “advanced” variant where players get special abilities once they complete their cards. This is a fun element to add but over all we didn’t feel like it dramatically impacted the game or made it more difficult. Sometimes the abilities were helpful, sometimes not so much. Over all its fun to add in for a different feel when you’re ready for a different challenge.

How does it work for kids? 

Our kids have really been enjoying Dragon Market as well! 

Mechanic wise, both Alice (nearly 8) and Sebastian (5) are able to play with Sebastian nearing independent play. I really like that the market cards are known information, this makes helping everyone a bit easier, even if just to show where a merchandise item is, and allows younger players like Sebastian the chance to join in. 

The most difficult element for him, and even Alice on occasion, is the ability to plan ahead and visualize how you need to move your boats and in what order so you can utilize your actions most efficiently. This takes a lot of practice and will definitely put younger players at a bit of a disadvantage against more seasoned players. 

That said, he still enjoys the fun of working through the problems and I think it’s good for him to stretch and test his abilities as well. That being said, younger players will definitely be at a disadvantage to older players as planning and forward thinking are learned skills that take a lot of practice to hone. There is a potential that this could be frustrating for younger children who can’t seem to find ways to win on their own.

Overall, if you are looking for a game to get a child under age 7, I wouldn’t recommend Dragon Market for them. That being said, there’s no reason that they can’t join in on a team or give it a shot on their own if you’re playing as a family and they’d like to try. 

Summary

With a beautiful design and a fantastic insert that aids in set up and tear down, Dragon Market is another great, lighthearted game that offers a well designed, casual puzzle experience for the family.

Fans of Labyrinth or Rush Hour will be at home here as they maneuver boats around to gather their items and create efficient paths. While this might be too simple for hard core gamers, Dragon Market is a nice option to help kids aged 7 or 8 build confidence in planning movements in a game that is both inviting and non threatening. 

For us, Dragon Market is family game night approved!

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A special thank you to the team at Blue Orange Games for sending us a copy of Dragon Market for review. As always, our thoughts and opinions are our own. 

Game Info:
Title: Dragon Market
2-4 Players Ages 7+
Designer: Marco Teubner
Artist:Tomasz Larek
Publisher: Blue Orange Games