Facebook Game Review: Gnome Town

It is just as cutesy as one would expect, with cute music and a host of adorable woodland critters to help take the forest back from the ‘Evil’ gnome for the Gnome king. The forest, on a small scale, must be cleared and cleaned up to build homes and useful building and to plant crops like carrots and strawberry bushes. Like every such game quests are undertaken and completed and collections are collected when tasks are completed. Each task completed gives the player experience points in order to advance levels. With each level comes new things to buy in the shop and more difficult tasks to complete.

Instead of the demanding and annoying ever-depleting energy bar, this game takes a different approach to spending for tasks. It is equally annoying, but at least its different. A player starts out with just themselves. Each task takes an allotted time, from just a few seconds to hours. A character can only perform one task at a time. One of the first tasks is to free Botkin Bunny from a cage. He was, of course, put there by the evil gnome and once free he is so grateful that he then becomes your helper. More helpers are hidden in similar cages in the forest. Each one freed gives you another helper able to perform many tasks, such as planting and tending crops or feeding pet snails or building new structures. While each task takes a certain amount of time that time can be sped up with ‘food’ which comes in some unhealthy cupcakes even when harvested from carrots and strawberries. New food can be purchased or harvested, and everything costs a little shiny in silver, which is available through the completion of tasks, and gold which can be purchased with real shiny.

That approach is at least novel, and does allow a player to continue with small tasks that don’t take a lot of time without waiting twelve hours for the energy bar to refill.  Another thing I don’t care for in the game is that the choice of avatar is very limited, just a girl gnome or a boy gnome.  No fun there.

All in all it is a bit like playing Ravenwood Fair, but not as well put together. It is extremely simple to play, even for a Facebook game, and maybe that is what they were shooting for. My six year old got bored in about three minutes. I give it three out of five stars, and those three are because it is easy to understand, easy to play and free. Hey, what do you want for free? Even from Disney.

Other game reviews by me:

http://gameolosophy.com/games/facebook-game-review-ravenwood-fair/

http://gameolosophy.com/games/adventure/facebook-game-review-adventure-world/

http://gameolosophy.com/games/facebook-game-review-the-sims-social/