Following up on a good news story from last week, we wanted to see what all the fuss was about for Gnomes, a new tower defence game that sold over 10,000 copies on Steam in four days. We’ve put it through its paces, and the bottom line is that Gnomes is a game that adds resource management and other mechanics into the usual build and survive loop that many tower defence titles use. The game starts by allowing you to choose one set of gnome warriors, dwellings for them and the production of crops to generate income to buy more dwellings and gnomes. The main aim of the game is to defend your castle from attack. These attacks are broken down into different waves, with each being more powerful than the last. To defeat the waves, players must buy gnomes that can attack the oncoming hordes. To buy a gnome, players must first build a dwelling. All of this is paid for by generating income from growing or harvesting the local habitats.
Once you’ve died a bunch of times but learned from every defeat, you start to win a few battles, and new sets of gnomes become unlocked. Which set of tools you will use will depend greatly on how you approach strategy in video games. It’s clear from the outset that there are lots of layers to Gnomes that you slowly uncover as you get more experienced in managing your gnome army. Once you’ve unlocked a few gnome tool sets, you’ll notice how each one has real strengths and weaknesses, and there is some depth to how each set of units performs as a game progresses. Lots of game-changing aspects come into play as well, you need to constantly be balancing spending your income wisely, investing in the future and making sure you can build each round as soon as possible.
After each wave, shop items can be purchased and these items make for an interesting distraction once the main game has played out. It allows you to mix up your gameplay style with a couple of clever purchases. One item we tried to always pick up early was the piggy bank, as it guaranteed an extra coin every round. Other items make managing your gnomes and production easier. You can occasionally buy a different unit type in the shop as well. Suddenly, you have two types of units, each having its impact, both positive and negative, on the upcoming challenges.
One aspect that will please some retro fans is that Gnomes is a very hard game to crack once you get beyond the first boss. It takes much practice to get anywhere into the later stages, and this is what makes it quite an ingenious title, as it forces you to really up your game on the strategy side of things. It took us about an hour to just get passed the first boss and attempt the next set of stages. But as you continue after each game over, you start to learn the nuances of Gnomes and how the different aspects of build, defend, plan and manage come into play at certain times.
This gameplay loop is brilliant and helps Gnomes stand out against the wave of tower defence titles on the market. Gnomes also has that classic one more go feel about it. You feel frustrated that you failed, but know that next time will be different as you continue to grow into the mechanics. You just want to see what is beyond the next stage each time. It’s a crawl, not a sprint and feels a lot like games of old that you just had to keep going back to the beginning and trying again. It may take weeks, even months, but as you learn more and more, you’ll start being more successful and getting to later stages.
If the fantastic old school mechanics and difficulty weren’t enough, then we should mention the wonderful retro aesthetic of beautifully animated pixel art that just pops from the screen. The colours are vibrant and everything is clear, you know exactly what each square has on it at all times. The simplicity of the sprite sizes is also a great feature, as with them being slightly small, a lot of them can fit onto the map to create a broader gaming experience overall. There is a lot of retro on show, but also plenty of mod cons to bring a little quality of life. The overall retro presentation is rounded out with a straightforward soundtrack that matches the on-screen gameplay perfectly.
There will be plenty of gamers who have played tower defence games before, many on mobile. But, Gnomes has extra depth in the gameplay department when compared to many on the market. It makes it easy to recommend it to fans of the genre as it’s a high-quality, clever, and well-thought-out tower defence game. Add in the great gameplay loop of grow, build, manage, strategize, and Gnomes looks like it could be a surprise contender for awards, it’s that good. It’s hard to think of many better games than this at this price point. Gnomes feels like a must-play title for strategy and retro fans alike.
