Draco and the Seven Scales guides

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Draco and the Seven Scales is Ice Goat Games' debut: a top-down pirate adventure in crunchy Game Boy-style pixel art, where a captain who bargained with a kraken has to fetch seven scales from seven seas. It launched on Steam on September 18, 2026, and the patches have kept coming; the October 26 Scourge update adds a harder difficulty you can select on a new or existing save.

You do not only walk. You also sail. Puzzles, dungeons and overworld routes are built so the same problem has a foot version and a ship version, and later dungeons keep stacking that idea.

Scourge difficulty: what changes and how to switch

Scourge, added October 26, is the harder difficulty option. Enemies no longer drop hearts, and damage you take is doubled. Do not plan to recover the health spent in a fight from the next enemy's heart drop.

You can choose it when starting a new save, or change difficulty in Settings after selecting an existing save. A new playthrough is not required just to switch the option. Check the selected difficulty before retrying a boss: a fight that now costs twice as much health may be a mode change, not a new attack pattern.

For an initial attempt, use the land-and-ship tools to solve the room and learn the boss's tells before committing to another close exchange. Scourge changes the cost of a mistake; it is not a replacement for finding the room's intended tool.

Your first hour, in five steps

1. Finish Cephalo Cave. 83.6% of owners had done it by September 22, 2026, and it teaches the land-and-sea language every later dungeon twists.
2. Update first, then check your controls and difficulty. If the image looks wrong, set Windows scaling to 100% on every monitor; the PS pad glyph problem was fixed on September 22. Details on tips.
3. When the overworld opens, get back on the ship whenever a dock, wreck or blocked channel is in view. The other body is usually the missing piece.
4. Buy every sea chart you see. You are never short of doubloons, and one finished-run review says there is nothing worth saving for. See collectibles.
5. Reach Paradise early. A player who finished the game: the mid-dungeon power-up there "is 10/10". Dungeon order and named bosses: dungeons.

Quick answers (checked September 22, 2026)

At a glance

Two credits worth knowing before you read anything else: the pixel art is by Manelzin, the music is by Tohomoko. Both are on the store page, and the soundtrack's track list is one of the few official sources that names places and bosses the game itself never labels in text.

What is actually in the game

The official feature list, in substance:

• Seven classic top-down dungeons plus the Heart of Draco finale, "crawling with enemies, items, and puzzles."
• Over 15 unique items for combat, puzzle solving and fishing, plus ship upgrades for handling and cannon prowess.
• Bosses fought over land and sea, with the store naming the Great Macaw of Paradise, your rival Captain Henny, Her Majesty's Royal Armada, and "more."
• Locals with their own stories — some ask for help and pay in treasure.
• Game Boy-style pixel art by Manelzin and a shanty soundtrack by Tohomoko, with a theme per area.

Nothing in that list promises New Game+, a hard mode or a second campaign, and no patch note has added one. The 1.0.6.0 notes do say hard mode and difficulty modifiers may arrive in a future patch — announced, not in this build.

What players are saying

Every Steam review so far is positive — 45 of them on September 22, four days after launch. The recurring notes, with the reviewer's own framing:

• The land-and-sea swap is the hook. "The shift between ship and captain gameplay immediately brings The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap to mind, but the interplay between the two scales feels far more entangled and engaging."
• Combat is a puzzle first. "The combat is a lot more of a puzzle than a brawl to the death, except for the boss fights which can sometimes get pretty hard!"
• It is a Zelda-lineage game and knows it. "All the good parts of Wind Waker + Link's Awakening + Minish Cap, plus it has pirates."
• Collecting does not feel like homework. "One of very few games where I was genuinely excited to hunt down collectables."
• The developer answers. "The dev is super responsive to his community too, and takes feedback seriously." That matches the launch-day forum replies this site quotes throughout.

The dissenting note, for balance: one forum user called the price high for a Game Boy-styled game and said they would wait for a sale; another replied that they were "completely happy with the price."

What is not on this site yet

• No numbered item, cannon or Siren Boon list — no official source publishes counts, and Steam still has zero community guides for the game.
• No room-by-room puzzle solutions — puzzle solving is the game; this site maps what exists.
• No boss HP or phase tables — the store names three encounters and stops.
• No world map — the official materials are store screenshots, not a map.

When a source appears, the page appears. What each page is allowed to claim, and where it comes from, is spelled out on the about page.

Art on these pages is official Steam store material, used for identification. Ice Goat Games, pixel artist Manelzin and composer Tohomoko own the game and its music; this site does not.

Checklists and fixes