Game file / ROGUE BY ROGUEGnomes
Gnomes is a turn-based tower defense with deep roguelike progression, set in ever-expanding, procedurally generated biomes. Build, farm and defend your village as you push deeper into goblin-infested territory. Unlock powerful upgrades and craft your environment to survive the endless goblin horde
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Video reviews
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Community discussion
A turn-based, maze-building tower defense roguelite by the two-person studio DYSTOPIAN in which you place and move weapon-wielding gnomes and plant crops to stop goblins reaching your garden shed.
Gnomes (Steam, April 2025, $9.99, Windows only) is very well received by players: about 1,850 Steam reviews at roughly 95% positive (Overwhelmingly Positive), with the last 30 days around 91%. Players call it a tight, replayable throwback to classic mazing tower defense (WC3-style) with Vampire-Survivors/Balatro-style roguelite build variety and short runs. Complaints centre on RNG-dependent shop and relic offers, degenerate dominant builds (cactus, economy plants) and a sweaty, laggy endgame, plus the per-turn chore of moving every gnome. It is not early access; the two devs keep shipping free updates (1.3 and 1.3.2 in 2025, 2.0 with 4 maps and 8 guilds in early 2026, 2.1 balance and performance, 2.2 controller beta) and have since announced a new game, ALLFATHER. No Metacritic or OpenCritic entry exists for this game, so the signal is player reviews, plus a few small outlets and curators quoted on the Steam page.
What players praise
- Classic maze-building tower defense where gnomes physically block paths and you funnel goblins past them; players compare it fondly to Warcraft 3 TD maps and Plants vs. Zombies
- Deep build synergies between gnomes, crops, buildings and relics (crops double as economy and buffs, e.g. coffee plant for attack speed), with items that change core rules like fertilising from dead goblins
- Short runs that encourage experimentation and quick pick-up-and-play sessions; run structure compared to Balatro with an endless mode after wave 16
- Distinct guilds act like character classes with different starting kits, and maps have different biomes, spawn points and music
- Charming lo-fi, arcade look and a soundtrack that many reviewers single out as excellent
- Excellent value (frequently bought around $5 on sale), runs on very low-end hardware, custom engine
- Responsive devs who keep adding free content (new maps, guilds, relics, languages) and act on feedback
- Procedurally generated maps and modifying the terrain give each run a different puzzle
What players criticize
- Shop and relic RNG is heavily influential; some players restart repeatedly until they get the upgrades a guild needs to function
- Balance: a few items, economy plants (e.g. cactus, yawn/root combos) and mazing strategies dominate, so late-game builds converge and strategic variety shrinks
- Late game / endless mode becomes sweaty, slow and laggy, with huge numbers of entities, path-visualisation clutter and very long late runs
- Some guilds feel like meme or challenge starts rather than solid strategy foundations, per a critical review after an update
- Only a single save/run slot at a time, even across modes
- Steep learning curve early on with little in-game guidance for people unfamiliar with classic TD
- Reviewers who bounce off it find it simple, repetitive or shallow: same loop with slight variations, little variety in artifacts, and runs too short for meaningful economy decisions
- Gnome class synergies are weak; most runs stick to one gnome class because of gold cost and class-specific artifact slots
Distinctive features
- Towers (gnomes) are movable every turn, making it a positioning puzzle rather than fixed-node placement, unlike most modern TDs
- Crops and plants are both the income engine and the buff system, so farming and defense are one loop
- Goblins and waves can alter the map (e.g. sappers leaving holes in your maze) and tile effects can redirect enemy waves
- Roguelite meta-loop with guilds and stages unlocked by play, pick-from-options choices and rule-bending relics, described as bringing Vampire Survivors/Brotato-style build craft into tower defense
- Endless mode after beating wave 16 with escalating waves, Balatro-style
- Turn-based pacing with unlimited placement per turn, in a compact, low-spec custom engine
Divided opinions
- The movable-gnome mechanic: praised as the game's defining twist by most, hated as a chore by a vocal minority
- The roguelite layer: some love the variance and variety, others say it would be tighter as a straight campaign TD with an optional endless mode
- Endgame difficulty and sweatiness: hardcore players enjoy the challenge and optimisation, others see degenerate builds and lag
- Depth: fans praise mastery and synergy depth, critics find strategy shallow and solved (plant economy plus maze)
Repetition and friction
- Having to move every gnome every round is called tedious and frustrating by several negative reviewers, and it is the main dealbreaker for players who prefer fixed-tower TD like Kingdom Rush
- Endgame grind: planting thousands of cacti or crops and still not clearing a level; very time consuming and punishing
- Restarting maps repeatedly to fish for a workable RNG shop
- Repetitive opening turns at the start of every run
- Short-lived fun for some: negative reviewers say the loop is simple and repeats the same strategy every run (plant as much as possible, build houses, brute force), so interest fades quickly
Hoped-for improvements
- Rebalance dominant economy builds and underpowered guilds so more builds are viable in the 20+ day late game
- Reduce RNG dependence (shop rerolls, guaranteed access to guild-relevant items) or add more ways to mitigate bad rolls
- Bulk or group movement of gnomes and other quality-of-life for repositioning, and multiple save slots (both requested on the Steam forum)
- Better onboarding and tutorial for newcomers to mazing tower defense
- Polish controller support (beta added in patch 2.2) and further late-game performance optimisation
- Add a proper soundtrack release (a reviewer wished for one) and requested features such as multiplayer
Launched April 4, 2025 at $9.99 with strong positive reviews and grew steadily on word of mouth. Mid-2025 updates (1.2 with 17 new languages via Gamersky/AllCorrect, 1.3 with 4 new maps and relics) brought waves of new players, and the devs reported about 15,700 new players in one month after 1.3. After a break of well over a year of seven-day weeks, they returned with 1.3.2 QoL (game speed resets to 1x each day, multiselect building tweaks, late-game performance). Update 2.0 (around March 2026, free) added 4 maps (caves, Niflheim, City, and a combined Portal 2 final challenge), 8 guilds and many relics. Patch 2.1 followed a TD Fest feature and a Daily Deal that brought roughly 20,000 new players; it nerfed degenerate builds (cactus and dynamite cost up and made uncommon, Green Thumb now adjacent only) and improved late-game performance, which a minority of reviewers say hurt late-game build variety. Patch 2.2 added controller support in beta. The devs nominated the game for the Steam 'Best Game You Suck At' award in late 2025. In late September 2026 one of the two devs announced a new project, ALLFATHER, so future content support is uncertain. Windows only (no Mac or Linux). A different 2012 iOS game named Gnomes exists on Metacritic but is unrelated. Web search budget was exhausted mid-session, so community reading is based on Steam reviews, the Steam forum and official patch notes rather than Reddit threads.
Community sources
- Top helpful positive and negative English Steam reviews (local file) ↗
- Local Steam metadata: developer, price, review totals, SteamSpy owners, tags ↗
- Steam store page: description, review summary, quoted critic blurbs ↗
- Steam forum topics: requested features such as multiple saves, bulk gnome movement, multiplayer ↗
- Official Steam patch notes and dev announcements (1.1 to 2.2, ALLFATHER) ↗
- Estimated gross and net revenue for Gnomes ↗
- Checked: the Metacritic page is for an unrelated 2012 iOS game, so no scores for this Gnomes ↗
- Checked OpenCritic search: no usable entry for DYSTOPIAN's Gnomes ↗
Archived creator commentary 1
Third-party summaries based on automatic captions may contain transcription or interpretation errors.
Tier list Part 4 (2025)
Gnomes is a tower defense map-building roguelike where you place and reposition gnomes, walls, crops and other structures to protect a house from goblins arriving from varying directions on an open map. It was sent to the channel by a viewer and he went in with zero expectations. He found it a surprisingly strategic, unusual take on tower defense that demands attention every round, so it is not a casual chill game. The minimalistic art and hard-to-read chaos hold it back somewhat. He settles on B tier, phrased as a good B.
What the creator praises
- Unusual fusion of tower defense and roguelike where units and structures can be moved every round
- Open map with enemies spawning from different places each round forces constant re-planning
- Strong pregame variety: roughly 16 starting loadouts plus different biomes (forest, swamp, desert) with distinct enemies
- Rerollable shop every round with lots of crops, nodes and passives supports wildly different builds
- Limited relic slots that can be expanded with money create meaningful choices
- Runs feel different each time and stay fairly short in round count; appeals to hardcore build-crafting fans
Issues raised by the creator
- Not for casual players; slow-paced and requires patience because of constant shopping and repositioning
- Minimalistic art makes it hard to tell which goblin does what when things get chaotic
- Chaotic moments are less satisfying than in Kingdom Rush or Bloons Tower Defense
- He feels he would need much more time to get the best out of it
Design observations
- Moving gnomes and structures every round instead of place-and-forget inverts the usual relaxed tower defense loop
- Player shapes enemy pathing by building walls in a fully open level rather than defending a fixed lane
- Tower defense and roguelike elements are aligned better than in many genre hybrids, per his view
