Find the Dragon of Your Dreams with cindr

December 7, 2021

With a chill in the air and the holidays upon us, your thoughts may be turning to romance.  We at Dragon’s Lair Comics and Fantasy® want you to know that dragons make great dates.  However, if you feel slightly intimidated at the thought of dating an actual dragon, Smirk & Laughter! Games has a great opportunity for you to practice with their new card game, cindr

With cindr, you’ll be taking dragons on dates to exciting, snuggly, and romantic locations.  If things go well, you can push your luck and try for a deeper connection with your dragon.  However, if you go too fast, you can get burned. 

You start the game by setting up your cindr dating profile.  You’ll pick a profile card (they’re all the same but for the art on them) and fill it out with a dry-erase marker.  Now, since cindr is a dating app focused on dragons, you’ll note your preferences on topics dragons find of great importance: treasure, climate, lifestyle, and sociability.  Each topic has three options (for instance, under Treasure you can pick: Hoarder, Investor, or Spender).  You mark only one option for each topic, and you can only have two or fewer picked in each column. 

Next, you’ll shuffle the deck of dragon cards.  You’ll look at the top card, which will have a picture of the dragon, their name, and a short bio by the dragon themselves.  For instance, Arcanax (Magi University Librarian) has the following profile: Seeking a companion for stimulating conversation and the appreciation of poetry.  Unoriginal pickup lines are an immediate disqualification.

From that, you’ll try to guess if Arcanax’s views and desires are compatible with your own.  If you think they are, you can try to date them; otherwise, you can “swipe left” and put them below the draw pile.  There can be three such dragons in the “swipe left” row.  You get two free swipe-lefts on your turn; after that, you have to burn Love Points for additional swipe-lefts.  You earn Love Points by successfully dating dragons.  So let’s see how that works.

Once you’ve decided to date a dragon, you put the dragon’s card next to your dating profile.  For every topic where you match with your date, you’ll get a green die.  If you’re one off, you get a blue die.  If you’re two off, you’ll get a red die.  To date your dragon, you roll all four of your dice.  The faces of the dice have either flames or hearts on them.  If you roll a flame, you set that die aside.  For each heart you roll, you get a love point.

Now, you can stop after the first roll and bank your love points.  But if you do that, the dragon goes back up into the swipe-left row, letting another player take that dragon on a date.  And now they know what that dragon’s opinions on love and life are!  However, if things are going well, you may want to take things to the Next Level.  Roll all the dice that didn’t come up flames.  If your total of dice that have come up with a flame is three or more, you get burned!  The dragon returns to the swipe-left row and you lose all the Love Points you’d accumulated on this date.  However, if you avoid rolling three flames, the dragon stays in your Circle; the only way another player can date this dragon is if they spend their own Love Points to lure them away.

Now you can set your heart on one dragon, taking them on a series of dates and never looking at another, but you don’t need to.  Dragons are famous, as you know, for our compersion (that’s why we give such great advice on picking games you’ll love).  You can end up with any number of dragons in your Circle.  Some dragons have special powers that activate while they’re in your Circle.

Of course, these dates all have to happen someplace.  The top card of the location deck tells you where you’ll be taking a dragon on a date.  Locations alter the rules, sometimes by allowing you to change dice or add more dice to your rolls. 

The object of the game is to get to 21 Love Points.  After one player does so, keep playing until everyone has had the same number of turns; the player with the most Love Points at this point is the winner.

Cindr is a cute and flexible game with a great premise and quick gameplay.  It takes about a half-hour to play and can entertain up to five players, making it a great option while someone sets up a more complex game.  There are also one-on-one options, solo options, and co-op rules.  Because there’s no hidden knowledge, it’s a great game to play over Zoom or other video services.  If you love fun fantasy art, push-your-luck games, or just need another cute and fun game that you can play at home by yourself or over the internet with friends, you need to swipe right on cindr

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