TL;DR – A perfect encapsulation of a premise, where every puzzle captivates you as you try to find its key to success, also you get to shoot Goblins with a blunderbuss.

GNOMES Review –

There are a lot of puzzle games out there that, once you work out their particular gimmick, they lose their power to intrigue. Today, we look at a game that changes things up every time you play, using the same building blocks to create vastly different scenarios. Then they took that core gameplay and framed it in a fantasy world that gives you the drive to explore more.

So, to set the scene, a war rages across a fantasy world, across every biome and society, one that has raged for so long that no one knows who started it or why. But they do see that wherever you are, the Goblins are at war against the Gnomes. Goblin war camps traverse the globe looking for Gnome towns to destroy. You have some gold and finite resources to raise a Gnome army to help defend your Garden Shed from destruction.

GNOMES, at its heart, draws on a multitude of classic elements, the core of which is the confounding yet constantly engaging tower defence. Across 16 days, each day will present you with new Goblin camps spewing out their Goblins, making a direct path to your base. But there are many things the Gnomes have at their disposal to try and fend the attacks off. You can build more Gnomes to fight them, you can create obstacles to redirect or damage the Goblins, you can go to the shop to buy new items to bolster your defence, or you can build crops to get more money.

One of the factors that helps GNOMES stand out is the vast amount of information available at your fingertips. Hovering your mouse over any tile gives you everything you need to know, which means you never feel like the game is trying to trick you or hide things from you, which does mean that every failure feels earned. You have nobody else to blame but yourself … okay, and the store for tempting you with a sombrero, but then not restocking it no many times you re-roll. This information helps feed into the central struggle of the game: what do you spend your resources on? New gnomes, better economy, or bonuses from the shop? It’s not an overwhelming list to keep track of, but the game will punish you if you get the balance wrong.  

The visual stylings might be where people have a problem with the game, because it leans into that very old-school retro vibe, reminiscent of pre-8-bit retro, where you use magenta non-ironically. I will say that there is A Lot of black. However, this graphical styling perfectly allows you to immediately take stock of the map and see what you need to see. Hmm, is that bubbling red liquid lava? Why, yes, yes, it is. This is added by the progression system that unlocks new maps and base sets as you go on, allowing you to learn the different terrain/Goblin/Gnome/Accessory combinations as you dive through the game. I think my favourite one so far is Gardeners, where you don’t start with any Gnomes, and can only use the environment to defeat the Goblins.      

In the end, do we recommend GNOMES? Absolutely. I have had a lot of fun working out all the different combinations and trying to clear each map. Each failure is just a lesson in getting the attack, economy, and purchase balance right. Add to that a delightful presentation and a consistently shifting set of parameters, and I would very much recommend checking it out.   

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you played GNOMES?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day. 

Credits – All images were created by the staff of GNOMES
Game Created by – Patrick & Tommy
Developer – DYSTOPIAN
Publisher – DYSTOPIAN