Gnomoria Review

System: PC
Players: 1
Rating: I give it a T (cartoon blood and gore, described violence, alcohol use).
The game is pretty complex, so I don't know if younger children would be interested.
DLC: No (community-made mods and texture packs available)
Website: Gnomoria.com

Note: Gnomoria is in the Early Access/beta stage.  It's not finished, but is available to play while under development.  Glitches and bugs are frequent.  Game content may change.

If, like me, you've tried Dwarf Fortress and found it a little difficult to pick up, Gnomoria's a great alternative. It's definitely not as complex or content-laden as DF, but it still has quite a few things to play with.  Gnomoria is obviously inspired by DF, but it's got its own unique systems in place.

In Gnomoria, you start out with a small group of gnomes, and help them to build and defend a settlement.  It sounds easy, but there's quite a bit to consider.   Do you build underground, or above?  Do you want a gigantic castle, or some small homes?  Do you want to deal with monsters, or just see how much stuff you can collect?  Flat area, or lots of hills?  Tons of ore to dig up or very little?  There's lots more to decide, and it's totally up to you.

Gnomoria makes good use of the keyboard and mouse, though I find it much easier to use the mouse for a majority of things.  You can also rebind many of the keys if you don't like the default setup.  The menus are pretty self-explanatory; most come with descriptions or help that can be accessed with a mouse-over.

The graphics are simple, but that's not a bad thing.  It's easy enough to tell what's what.  Extra detail isn't really necessary, and would only complicate things.  If you really don't like the graphics (or other bits of the game), there are mods and texture packs available on the official forums.

Gnomoria isn't a game you can just jump into and play right away.  Even if you've played similar games, you'll need some info on how things work.  There's no in-game tutorial or manual to help you along, so you'll have to do a bit of reading; the wiki or forums are good places to start.  Of course, you could always mess with stuff to see what works and what doesn't, but that could take a while.  Once you pick up the basics, things get easier.  And after you've played for a while, things take much less time to get set up.

My only major complaint with the game so far is some of the AI.  Sometimes, gnomes will do certain tasks in the most backwards, random way possible.  I've had gnomes trap themselves by removing the wrong parts of a floor, or by sealing off a room from the inside.  Instead of clearing things out of a filled workshop, they'll run to the deepest part of a mine to bring up one chunk of stone.  Occasionally, two gnomes will try to pick up the same item, resulting in both of them spinning circles around each other for a few minutes.  Then they give up and nothing gets done.  There are ways around this; for instance, you can remove floors one row at a time, working towards "safe" ground.  This tends to slow things down considerably, though.

Other than that, Gnomoria's a pretty fun little sandbox/village management game.  It has lots to offer, and more content is added on a fairly regular basis.  If you're new to this type of game, or are more familiar with DF, I strongly recommend trying the demo first.  I've seen people end up disappointed because they were expecting something completely different.