A Hidden Gnome Game That Bites Back
We feel honey-trapped by Gnomdom. The screenshots made the game look the cosiest of cozy, like we were about to slide into some woolly slippers and our dressing gown for an hour. “Whimsical”, “lush” and “charming” were tossed around in the press materials. We treated it as a kind of wellness retreat after a bout of ARC Raiders.
WRONG. Haha, fools! The gnomes wandered up to us and kicked us in the knackers.
Okay, we’re over-selling it a tad, but you get the point. Gnomdom presents as a rather lovely hidden-gnome game. But it’s actually a set of fiendish puzzles that will bake your noodle. If you’re like us and you came to lean back, then we’re sorry – this is more lean in. A notepad and pen may be a requirement.
Gnom-domiciled Individual
There are few games as simple and easy to describe as Gnomdom.
It’s Grandpa Gnome’s 100th birthday and he just wants the kids to get off Youtube for five minutes and come to his party. The youth of today, eh? Instead of celebrating his milestone, they’re lounging on mushrooms, hiding behind sticks and getting eaten by carnivorous plants.
There are twelve gnomes to gather and twelve areas to explore. Each area is a 2D scene with a gnome that is surprisingly easy to spot. We see you, aptly named Pyromaniac Gnome (with a name like that, who can blame him for his life choices?). But the problem is not how to find the gnome: it’s to clear the obstacle that blocks them.
Which means puzzles. Sometimes one puzzle, often two, and rarely three. These puzzles split roughly into two: the familiar and the slightly unfamiliar. You’ll have done the familiar ones umpteen times before, whether in hidden object games, Legend of Zelda temples, or by watching Die Hard with a Vengeance. There’s a classic Tower of Hanoi, a sliding puzzle and some memory cards. If you were to think of the most overly-used puzzles in games, you’d probably come up with a few here. Which is to say that Gnomdom can be a little on the lazy side.
But then there are also unfamiliar ones, and this is where Gnomdom’s at its best. We’ll return to our old mate the Pyromaniac gnome. He’s behind that twig, and in front of him are a few dandelions and – conveniently – a crystal prism. How can you combine these to get rid of the twig? Oh, dearie, that would be telling – but the name of the gnome is a clue.
Gnomwhere To Hide
The puzzles can be rather fiendish. Perhaps you know what the puzzle wants, but it’s the getting there that is a problem (sliding puzzles are my kryptonite, I swear). Or you have an inkling that the colours of some berries or flowers in the background are important. But how? On occasion, I didn’t have a Scooby of what the puzzle wanted at all – at least initially.
Gnomdom could have done a little more here to help the player. There’s no hint system, which would have been friendly. Some puzzles have a reset button, but others inexplicably don’t, which is a ballache for players who want to return to a default state and use a walkthrough. And there’s certainly nothing like a skip button. You’re completing all of these whether you like it or not, which may be expected by some but a pain for others.
We got there, with only one retreat to a Fangamer page for a walkthrough (a Rush Hour-style moving block puzzle had our number). Which is to say that the difficulty is actually pitched quite well as a challenging puzzler, albeit not the breeze we expected.
The only mild expansion on this formula is that twelve photographs are also hidden around the place. It’s one per level, as you might expect. That means hovering the cursor over bits of the environment and puzzle, tweaking noses and pushing down carrots in the hope of finding a Polaroid. It’s throwaway but cute, and actually more reminiscent of the Gnomdom we expected to play.
Gnom-Snacks
And that really is it for Gnomdom. Once all twelve puzzles are done there’s some hoovering up of achievements, but otherwise Gnomdom can be ensconced in the back of the memory, if it lodges there at all.
Gnomdom is a gnomic snack, a wee confection that will pass a couple of hours for a puzzle player. It’s pitched slightly higher on the difficulty scale than we expected (see how we’ve retreated from the opening ‘kicked us in the knackers’ line?), but otherwise it’s a fine, friction-free way to spend £2.49.
Important Links
Buy Gnomdom from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/gnomdom/9pml45d6m76h
