Please login to submit a screenshot

Title Gnome
Game Type Platform
Company Linel
Players 1
HD Installable ? (*)
Compatibillity All (?)
Submission Joachim Froholt Profiled Reviewer

Review
Gnome is a platform game that follows the classic "pick up a bunch of
objects to advance to the next level" style, but adds a few interesting
twists of it's own. Unfortunately, they're not very well implemented and
the game ends up playing like a below average PD game. What's the game
like, then, and why does it fail at being addictive? Well, read on, and it
will all be revealed (or this would have been a very questionable review
indeed..)

In Gnome, you control a gnome (well, duh!) who's mission it is to pick up
as many diamonds as possible. However, the twist is that these diamonds
aren't scattered about the single screen levels from the start, but have
to be created by the gnome. This is done by throwing a mushroom seed on
the ground (the creators obviously didn't know that mushrooms don't grow
from seeds..), and waiting for the seed to grow into large mushroom, which
will eventually pop and reveal a diamond. Fortunately, you can grow
several mushrooms at once, which speeds up the collecting a bit.
Naturally, things aren't as straightforward as they might at first seem.
There's some baddies around as well, you see, including a bunch of greedy
wizards who will steal any diamond they can get their hands on. Then
there's the clock: Should you fail to pick up a certain number of diamonds
within a time limit, you lose a life.

To help you, you can buy loads of cool stuff from a shop after every
second level. The goodies include speedup potions, enemy slowdowns, extra
life, and a bunch of other stuff. You can even halve the amount of enemies
that are generated on each level. So far, so good, then? Well, no. You
see, by buying these upgrades, you're making the game incredibly easy.
What should have been a frantic hunt for diamonds turn into simply waiting
for the mushrooms to pop, while avoiding the occational slow moving wizard
or horned monster. The level design is incredibly bland, and the levels
themselves offer no challenges or obstacles at all. The only thing that's
challenged by this game is your patience.

This is a pity, because this game might have been a very addictive game if
it had been playtested properly. The graphics are simple, but pleasant
enough, and the music is nice. But the game isn't worth your money, so
don't buy it. If you can find it for download on one of the legal adf
archives, you might want to have a go at it, though...


(* No need, you'll probably finish it on your first go)