Merge Dragons!

Developer: Gram Games
Role: Game Designer
Engine: Unity
Platforms: iOS, Android
Release: June 28th 2017
Genre: Puzzle-Merge

Overview

Merge Dragons! is a F2P puzzle adventure game that combines merge 3 and 5 mechanics with base-building and light narrative progression.

Set in the magical land of Dragonia, players restore a world corrupted by dark forces by merging objects such as plants, treasures, and dragon eggs to evolve them into increasingly powerful forms.

Through completing puzzle levels and bring rewards back to a persistent camp, players hatch and grow dragons that help harvest resources, gradually expanding and healing the envionment. Blending casual, tactile gameplay with long term progression systems, while emphasizing collection, optimization, and incremental world restoration, Merge Dragons! creates a loop where merging directly fuels both mechanical advancement and visual transformation of the game world.

Official Merge Dragons! Site

Live Events

The Out-of-Camp Live Events are time-limited, map based experiences where players progress by merging objects, harvesting resources, and clearing cursed land to earn event points and rewards.

The map design is intentionally structure to support player engagement over time: early areas are highly mergeable and resource-rich in lower level tiered items, allowing for fast progression, satisfying merges, and extended play sessions without friction.

Maps are designed to consider both Merge 3 and 5 players. Mid to late game play introduces increasing scarcity and larger healing requirements, creating a grind phase once players are invested.

To keep the experience fresh across events, layouts and dragon type (speed) are varied with features such as segmented islands, gaps, and obstacles, encouraging players to adapt their usual optimization strategies and rethink spatial planning.

A key progression system within these events is the use of clouds and cloud keys, which are sections of the map covered by clouds that can only be unlocked by placing a specific required item onto the key silhouette slot.

These keys are typically hidden deeper within the map or require multi-step merge chains, so the unlock becomes a relief from the grind and a delight in discovery.

Narrative Event

The Shogun Shiba Live Event became the first event to use narrative as a reward. Story Tome markers provided small bits of story progression, encouraging players to heal more land for an emotional reward. This system was later used in the crossover Rick and Morty

These Story Tomes were placed in the first third of the map to introduce the new shiba dragons characters and how their party snacks have mysteriously disappeared. It is later revealed that the Zomblins had stolen them. The story also explains why Zomblins drop Blue Cheese, which is used to create a new Spirit Lantern Chain.

Spirit Lantern Chain

The Spirit Lantern Chain was created to provide a chain that came from the item that Zomblins dropped during the Shogun Shiba event.
These items have since been used in other events or as rewards.

Bon Bon and Nilla Dragons

These dragons were designed for a new Sweets themed event that we used for the Merge Dragon’s Birthday. These were created to work as a hybrid with other Dragons and themes.

Nocturne Oasis Map Levels

For the Nocturne Oasis levels, I wanted to create a gestural rhythm and feeling, as if the player were conducting a musical beat with their actions. The previous levels were very puzzle-like or grindy, so I wanted to provide a sort of emotional rest or visual massage type of series of levels.

I noticed that if I were to place certain items in specific unhealed or healed places, I could have each merge result in an item automatically popping into a nice spot where the player can drag the merges along as if they were sweeping across the whole level in a satisfying way.

The series of levels was plotted and positioned while considering multiple factors such as: Duration, Chalice Cost, Difficulty, Gameplay Type (Puzzle, Grinding, Battle, Dexterity, Experiential), as well as the surrounding levels on the map. The aim was to create a feeling of a story or connective flow between levels and provide a natural feeling of progression.