Gnomoria is a sandbox village management game where you help lead a small group of gnomes, who have set out on their own, to thrive into a bustling kingdom! Anything you see can be broken down and rebuilt elsewhere. Craft items, build structures, set traps and dig deep underground in search of precious resources to help your gnomes survive the harsh lands. Build your kingdom and stockpile wealth to attract wandering gnomads to your cause, but be wary of also attracting enemies!
For years, I've been hoping and praying that someone... ANYONE would take the concept of a Dwarf Fortress style fantasy village sim game and make it into an actual marketable-quality game. No offense to DF, of course, but it has the accessability of Mt. Everest and a Rubix Cube of a UI.
Gnomoria may just be the answer to that prayer. Though the game seems to have come out of nowhere, the functionality, presentation, and potential of this one surpass any alpha I've ever played.
The game itself sticks quite close to its DF roots, but rather than being a rip-off, it feels more like a logical progression. It's clear that the developer loved that game and made a worthy homage to it by including many of the little details that made it great. Though all of the systems are still being padded out (there are, for example, not as many types of materials, enemies, etc as the developer obviously plans to have eventually), the majority of them work beautifully already and seem like an excellent foundation for something even bigger. A few familiar appearances include individual stats/skills for each resident, a value system based on material (and possibly craftsmanship in the future), multiple materials to make the same items and colorful presentations of what you've made (an oak workshop looks different than an applewood workshop), rediculously deep mineable procudurally generated maps (102 floors below the surface, so far), extremely good procedural land feature generation, the ability to build up into the air as well as into the ground, and my personal favoirte, detailed and brutal text-based number-free combat logs.
This is, of course, all wrapped up in one beautiful pixely presentation. The characters/enemies look great and seeing your creations in a colorful, detailed way gives it that visual gratification that DF was always lacking. I'm running out of space for this review, but I definitely believe this could be an amazing project, well worth funding and supporting.
Awesome game, full in development still but its great to be able to participate in the development proccess. 10/10
If you enjoy Dwarf Fortress, and wish it had nice graphics and a vastly improved interface, do yourself a favor and buy this game. 'Nuff said.
Gnomoria has to be one of the most pleasing item/player/resource management type games. I'm sure everyone is tired of the Dwarf Fortress comparisons so I'll try to leave those out. However, I've been a DF fan and player for years and enjoy these games in an obviously similar way.
Gnomoria has surprising depth in a tight, refined little package. It makes it easy to get started and get addicted quicker. The UI is mostly a pleasure to use. I'd love some hotkeys right out the gate, but that's not a huge deal and is accessible via the options. Click-selecting is extremely useful for some things, but I find it easiest to use a few keypresses once you are familiar with the game. Apart from that, there are some inherent difficulties in selecting because of the isometric view. This isn't a fault of Gnomoria, it is just something that has to be dealt with in all games that use it. Fortunately, we can rotate our view which often helps.
The textures and music are all well-done and have a nice charming quality to them. There is a lot of variety already in the visual distinctions between using different wood and stone, etc. The subtle changes are a welcome addition.
As an alpha game I am looking forward to some new mechanics to be added. I'm sure the content will be expanded on later. As it stands, it already has a good amount. In a perfect world I'd love to see Gnomoria get really into the details of the items in its world so that everything has multiple uses and players are constantly surprised with what they are able to do. It helps break down some of those game barriers that try to impose a one item, one use mentality that is all too prevalent. If I have a yak, I want to have the option to use its meat, organs, or bones for food, I want the hide for clothes or crafts, I want its milk, I want to train it or breed it, I want to be able to attempt to ride it, etc. Laying a framework for such things would make future additions a breeze. Well, maybe just considerably easier
BEST GAME EVAR AND BEST MUSIC TOO OF COURSE BAFTA NAO PLZ!
Hey guys! Im the music / sfx composer guy person for Gnomoria. I've read some really great feedback here so far, and wanted to let everybody know that the audio in Gnomoria is just as alpha as everything else, so please keep the CC coming! (Unless its like "agh you suck pls die!", which I cant do much about sorry! haha).
SFX and a considerable bunch of new tunes will be implemented in an upcoming release, and Rob and I are working on some ways to make Gnomoria have a sound world which is both classic in feel, but modern in implementation: music will vary in style and frequency depending on day/night cycle, gnome mood, health, weather, activity, depth, all sorts of things. Also, for those of you who found the music to be a bit high treble / too loud, FEAR NOT! I havent done any final EQing on any of these yet, and will definitely take your ears into consideration.
So anyway, thanks for playing and caring enough to comment! This is really exciting :D
This game is awesome.
Really well done game so far 10/10
great game
Very cool game. Very Dwarf Fortress like with great visuals and easy menus. The developer listens to the community and updates often!
I have but one simple word for you my friends... Squeeeee!