Dragon Coins

The game plays as a combination of Puzzle and Dragons and coin-collecting games found in arcades.[1][2] The game is free to play with in-app purchases available for the player to purchases the in-game currency, along with other items, using real world currency.[3][4] The player has to drop coins on to the dragons, which then the dragon charges up its attacks to battle computer-controlled opponents.[5] Sometimes the player will find the dragon with "Special Attacks". If the player loses a round, they will lose small amounts of money earned by previous rounds.

The game was developed by Sega and first released in Japan in 2012.[6] Its initial release featured a crossover with Capcom's Megaman franchise.[6] The game was later released in North America and Europe on 8 May 2014.[7] In all regions, it was released on the iOS and Android mobile platforms.[8]

The game was shut down on 21 August 2015 in Japan and on the 24 August 2015 in the rest of the world, just a little more than a year after its English release.[9] A Sega representative explained it was due to the game not bringing in an audience sufficient to support running the games servers and updates.[10]

The game's release was considered a success in Japan, where it was seen as part of a wave of games that used gameplay elements typically found in arcade games and translated them into popular mobile phone games.[6][11] Serkan Toto, CEO of Kantan Games Inc. - a Tokyo-based video game industry consultancy focused on the Japanese market - cited it as a game that found success in combining elements from Casino games in mobile games as a method of getting around Japan's legal order to stop all kompu gacha-based games at the time.[11] Western reception was less positive, with the game being forced to shut down just over a year after its release.[9] Peter Willington of Pocketgamer gave the game a 6/10 score, stating that the core gameplay was technically proficient, but that it lacked anything to keep players along for the long-term, concluding that it was "a slick-looking, technically sound digital representation of a penny-pusher, with some very light RPG elements thrown in, but its lack of interaction with others ensures that its simple gameplay tires all the more quickly."[4] Nadia Oxford of Gamezebo gave the game a higher 8/10, referring to it as a good Puzzle & Dragons clone, but as such, lacked originality, and suffered from steep and expensive in-app purchases, hurting its long-term appeal.[12]