I'll be the first to admit I'm not super across the latest games hitting the store shelves anymore. Where once I used to scour the latest game release articles looking for games to play, now I'm a lot more focused on getting through Baldur's Gate 3 without upsetting one of my companions and ruining my entire playthrough. As a result, many games are hitting the market, and I only find out about them once I stumble into EB Games every blue moon.
Imagine my surprise when I got an email about this brand new tower defence game by Aussie developer DYSTOPIAN from Craig Ritchie (Drop Bear Bytes, developer of Broken Roads), simply entitled Gnomes. I downloaded the Steam key provided that afternoon and booted the game up with low expectations. I'm not a massive tower defence game enthusiast, but I've recently discovered a passion for dancing, so I was feeling more open to different experiences.
Not to kill any anticipation for the end of this article, but turns out I had a great time with this game. Before you all change the tab or your view ricochets across to whatever's scrolling on your tickety-tock, let me break down the game premise for you. You're the omnipotent god of a village of gnomes in a fantastical, procedurally generated environment. As a punishment for outsourcing your work to the algorithmic monolith, your land has been beset by goblins. You've got some farmland, some houses, and some money to hire gnomes to defend the village.
Gnomes is a turn-based tower defence game with a roguelike progression system. That system is pretty standard for tower defence games, but instead of having different units per setting, this game only has one type of gnome per environment level. This adds a bit of specific strategy for each environment, like long lines for the arrow gnomes or chokepoints for the axe-wielding gnomes. The enemies grow in strength each round, and by the final few rounds, you're planning on multiple battle fronts and fighting mages, knights and the goblin king before vanquishing the goblins from that land.
The game is surprisingly addictive. I've played for the last week, and there's an element of "just one more go" that I find is essential for turn-based games to keep players from getting bored and changing games. At first, I thought I would only play a couple of rounds before giving up and playing something else, but then I looked up and saw it was dinner time, and I had been playing for a couple of hours.
The artwork and sound effects/music are minimal and don't wow me as such, but that all works to remove any unnecessary distractions and focus on the primary gameplay loop that is the core of this game. There are also a variety of power-ups and upgrades that, to be honest, I didn't bother with, but I imagine once I get more of a grip on the various strategies to use, then I'll turn my attention to them more.
Overall, Gnomes is a whole lot of fun, and for anyone who's a fan of tower defence games or even if you're looking to dip your toes into this type of game, be sure to check out Gnomes when it lands on Steam on April 4th! A big thank you to Craig Ritchie for giving me the scoop on this great game.
Are you a big fan of tower defense games? What's your go-to tower defense game, and are you going to pick up Gnomes? Let us know in the comments below.
