GNOMES

Hubert Spala
May 21
5 min read

I have a giant weakness towards all things whimsical. I hold a firm belief that humankind was not made to work tedious hours at a soulless job to make some fat cat's pockets heavier. But rather to wander the primordial forest. Talk to trees. Make a tea from colorful herbs. Have dreams about unicorns after imbibing said tea. Saying "Good Morning" to Crows and tipping your hat to a Mushroom. Yeah. I love that stuff, the druidcore meta. And so, Gnomes - the oft-mocked and looked down upon brethren of Dwarves - are not exactly a hard sell for me. I like'em. I want them. And any game having them as the main focus already starts on a good standing with me.

GNOMES is, however, not about those jovial German garden gnomes with smiles and an empty gaze, suggesting a vacancy of thought. No, it is about hardy little folks of no-nonsense, grizzled forest-dwellers. Who will do what must be done to ensure their expanding village and crops survive the invasion from the conquering goblin tribes! That's nice, you might say, but what kind of game is it? Well. Uh. A Tower Defense with firm Roguelike structure. No, please don't run away! I know... The Tower Defense genre isn't exactly starving for titles. I even encountered a notion that it is an "indie dev starter game" due to its simple nature. Static towers. Path for enemies to bounce upon. Very predictable design elements and core gameplay. Ideal for that first project to gnaw your developer chops on.

But just because a game is a part of a rather saturated genre doesn't mean it doesn't have anything new or interesting to say! GNOMES hooked me in and hooked me hard, due to a few interlaced elements that I never felt were executed so well before in any other peer of the genre. First of all, the enemy paths are malleable - placing your gnomish warriors, structures, and even crops can alter the path. You have quite complete freedom in moving your "towers" around as each Gnome Warrior happily relocates where you put them. This, on its own, offers a solid depth of tactical flexibility in how you want to tackle each incoming wave of enemies. As well as instructing on your infrastructure planning.

Working the shop is part of the strategic gameplay - not only buying and unlocking new crops, structures, or gnome classes, but also banishing things not suiting our build.

See, your hearty Axemen, Archers, Mages, and the company need some humble abodes to live in between waves. And everything costs that delightful gold, which you also need to produce in some way. Economy is a huge part of the game, and if you neglect it early on, be ready to see that Game Over screen and start from scratch on a new run. The primary way of ensuring your monetary gain comes from various crops, each having specific conditions, growth, bonuses... It's a surprisingly complex system! Especially since it's hardly the only way to generate income.

The best part of GNOMES comes with its roguelike DNA. No run will ever be the same, because the very structures you can buy and place, the very crops come at you at random between each wave, for you to buy and unlock for the run. Same with your various gnomes. And Relics! Relics, as you can guess if you ever played a roguelike before, are a permanent item that grants you some additional passive benefit. Some of them can be rudimentary - increased income, damage, and durability. Some can be a bit trickier, buffing, playing with a solo gnome champion, or modifying some fundamental rules. It's a wild world out there!

This is where it all comes together like a proper druidic potion. All those mechanics, all these elements tossed into a big iron cauldron to stew and bubble with froth of engaging gameplay.

A good roguelike, for me, triggers in a player two particular responses. First is the desire to try again. A burning, gut-wrenching, bubbling need to play a new round the moment the last one stumbled open... or was won triumphantly. This can be achieved in many ways, but the best games of the genre make it due to a blend of a highly entertaining core loop, in which the player feels that they have agency to experiment and triumph. And a mixture of tantalizing unlocks after each run, teasing us with potential for more wacky shenanigans to be had with the game systems.

With strong economy it is not a hard task to wrought control over enemy pathing, using structures to narrow goblin option to a singular pathway of death.

The game isn't a walk in the park either. It's not a milquetoast roguelike that holds your hand, pats your back and let you scale your build into ludicrous levels of power with little effort. Oh no, if you want to defeat the devious Goblin King and his hordes, you better get ready to keep trying, because he ain't playing around. If your economy cannot sustain great growth, if you don't have a solid army of roided up, levelled up Gnome Champions at your disposal... Well. I am sure you can get there next time!

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the atmosphere of the game, because it is... a little special. I don't want to say it's Wow, Out of This World unique. It's a pixel art game for Josh's sake, and it's not like Pixel Art is some cherished rarity in indies. But this is a bit different, it's that... Ye Olde School Pixel Art. Black background, minimalistic sprites, kind of somber tone, it doesn't try to emulate the robust, sparkly, and rich styles of the late SNES or Arcade Games. But rather DOS-era fantasy games, using what they can to convey a sense of maturity, with muted colors, toned down vibrancy. A serious vibe. It looks great and sounds fantastic.

GNOMES check off all the boxes on my checklist for a fun, engaging roguelike experience. There are new decks and biomes to unlock, giving us different starting options and combo potential. Dozens of relics, crops, items, and class types for our brave bearded warriors. And the biomes aren't even just a cosmetic shift, each biome bringing with it unique tiles with different rules and interactions. And so, the game blossoms, each run offering a new challenge, a different way to approach it, a dynamic puzzle. All that is well fuelled by a simple achievement system that asks you to complete the run with each guild (that is, a starting deck), clean up every biome, as well as a smattering of other goals to achieve - a competently made system to keep you playing.

And so, here we are - GNOMES in my lap, asking me to beat those new biomes I didn't even try yet. Fine, fine! I'll get to it! Good, I just unlocked a couple of new guilds, will see what they bring to the table. So, uh, yeah! If you enjoy a tactical placement combat roguelike tower defense with bearded protectors of the forest at your bidding... Give GNOMES a go. It's a game bigger than the sum of its parts.