Union of Gnomes

A dull card game with major flaws and a very bad campaign mode. In the campaign missions you can't skip adding cards to your deck and you have to pay travel costs based on card value (which is irritating in its own right). You're forced to dilute your deck and then are penalized for doing so. The deck manager is horrible. There's no search option, storage doesn't put returned cards in order so they're all jumbled, the filters are so limited as to be useless, and you can't save decks. Some mission bosses have strengths that completely negate certain decks. If you encounter a poison immune boss, you'll have to trash your poison deck then build a different one then afterwards rebuild your poison deck, all while fighting the terrible deck building UI. Adding insult to injury, missions don't warn you what the boss's strength is so you might spend an hour getting to the end of a map just to find your deck can't damage the boss at all. The only thing that changes how your deck functions during a mission is "bling" that you can use to add bonuses to card slots. Unfortunately they only last 1 mission, they rarely drop, and you have to get lucky to draw a card into the bling slot that…

Didn't click for me. The metagame progression is fine, but the runs themselves aren't too interesting. The UI isn't great, basic QOL is missing, and there are a couple of weird design choices. There are a bunch of different builds possible but these are mostly boilerplate.

"When a Fairytale Adventure Feels More Like a Bedtime Story." At first, I was honestly very intrigued by the premise of Union of Gnomes. A roguelike deckbuilder with a gnome-focused world mixed with fairy tale elements sounded genuinely unique, especially for a genre that often repeats the same dark fantasy or sci-fi themes. The concept and setting immediately caught my attention, and as someone who loves roguelike deckbuilders, I expected this to be something I’d really get into. Unfortunately, in my short time playing it, I was surprised by how quickly the game lost my interest. Despite being fairly straightforward mechanically, the overall pacing felt oddly slow and dragged down the experience for me. Even shorter runs somehow felt like a slog to get through, which is the opposite of what I usually want from this genre. There’s constantly a lot happening on screen and within the systems, but instead of feeling engaging, it mostly just felt tiring. The biggest issue by far for me was the loading times. They were honestly insanely bad for a single-player roguelike deckbuilder and completely killed the flow of the game. It’s very unusual for games in this genre to struggle that …

After 10 hours, I felt like it was not very interesting or even much fun. The runs felt the same as there really isn't any need to adjust your deck once you get the hand of things. Well, until you hit a wall with some enemy that negates your deck completely thus wasting the entire run. The cards that are unlocked aren't typically any better than the starting set. The "Bling" accessories are only good for the current mission and are used up afterwards. Bling itself is hard to obtain as well. Meta-progression requires way too much grind for me to waste my time to do so. I feel the developers made the bad decision to stretch out the game play time with a very boring grinding mechanic. The story just wasn't for me. I didn't find any humor in it even though they tried nailing it to me with a big hammer. It was just over the top nonsense. The graphics are mediocre and the music is a very standard type. I came across a few bugs here and there. One time I went into an event mission inside the run and it wiped out all my money and sausages. It made it rather difficult to complete the overall run. Another time, the "shopoholics" didn't give me back the money they took after the battle …

This game made some design decisions that I find hard to understand. You start with a deck of 10 gnomes, and then have the ability to add more throughout each run. But the gnomes you start out with are no less powerful then the ones you find along the way, so unlike StS you aren't making your deck stronger by adding new cards; you are just diluting it and pivoting somewhat. Furthermore, you have to pay upkeep for each gnome in your deck. It is a very thematic rule, but mechanically it makes adding more cards have an even larger drag. Combined with needing to upgrade gnomes individually, the end result is that increasing your squad is liable to make you weaker, not stronger.

Union of Gnomes is a refreshing blend of roguelike deckbuilding and tactical strategy that takes familiar fairy-tale concepts and turns them upside down. Developed by Hoolignomes and published by HeroCraft PC, the game places players in charge of a rebellion of gnomes determined to overthrow the oppressive rule of Snow White. This unusual premise immediately gives the game a distinctive identity, separating it from many fantasy-themed deckbuilders that often rely on more conventional heroes-versus-monsters narratives. The result is a colorful and entertaining adventure that combines humor, strategic combat, and meaningful progression into a surprisingly engaging package. The game's story serves as more than a simple backdrop for battles. Players guide a growing resistance movement through a world inspired by classic fairy tales, encountering familiar characters and locations that have been reimagined through a comedic lens. The writing embraces satire and playful humor, creating an atmosphere that remains lighthearted even when the stakes become serious. Rather than presenting a dark revolution, the game delivers a whimsical struggle for freedom that consistently maintains its cha…