You are a small dragon, and the heroes are coming for your treasury.

Pocket Dragon Dungeon is a dungeon defense roguelite built for short sessions. Set your defenses, watch the battle resolve, take an upgrade, repeat. A full run is ten battles — around twenty minutes at the default speed, or around eight if you turn the speed up.

■ HOW A BATTLE WORKS

Before each fight you deploy up to three monsters across three defensive rooms, and place your dragon wherever you want it. Then the doors open. Combat runs by itself in real time, and you can raise the speed to 1.5x, 2x or 3x whenever you like — or switch to SIMPLE, which drops the animation and settles a fight in seconds. There is no mid-battle micromanagement — every decision is made before the first hero walks in.

■ NINE MONSTERS, NINE JOBS

Wood is a wall: high health, high defense, and no intention of moving. Slime strips armor off whatever it touches. Goblin attacks fast and finishes wounded targets. Orc sweeps every enemy in the room at once. Ogre hits hardest, Mash poisons a whole room, Ferret strikes fastest, Healing Mash keeps the line standing, and Nightmare puts attackers to sleep. You hold two of each, and a monster that falls is gone for the rest of the run.

■ THE DRAGON IS THE RUN

Your dragon is the strongest unit you have and the one you cannot afford to lose. Put it on the front line and it kills quickly. Leave it exposed and the run ends. At low health it falls back toward the treasury — once. Losing monsters is survivable. Losing the dragon is not.

■ SIX KINDS OF HERO

Hero, Warrior, Knight, Mage, Cleric and Thief press forward in three waves per battle, and the tenth battle sends their champion. Armor, first strike and heavy hits mean the same defense never works twice in a row.

■ ONE UPGRADE AT A TIME

After each win you choose one of three upgrades. Feed the dragon, or reinforce the monster that has been carrying your defense. Ten battles is not enough to raise everything, so the run is shaped by what you pass over.

■ THE DEEP CAVERN

An optional pack opens a larger dungeon: twelve defensive rooms in a four-by-three layout, two more monsters in Gargoyle and Kobold, three new traps, and two more heroes to hold back. It adds ground to defend, not numbers to win with — the base ten battles are built to be cleared without it.

■ ADS AND PURCHASES

Interstitial ads appear only at breaks: after a result screen, and when you return to the title. They never cut into a battle, an upgrade choice, or the tutorial. Rerolling your three upgrade candidates is optional and watches a rewarded ad — one reroll per upgrade screen.

A one-time purchase removes the forced ads permanently, and lets you take that same reroll without watching anything.

■ AGE AND DATA

The game asks for your age range once and keeps it on the device. Ads are initialised only for players who select the adult range. No account is required. The advertising and purchase SDKs collect data as described in the privacy policy.