i wish they added a vegan option in the menu so that gnomes would eat brocolli or bananas instead of wieners

A terrible game in terms of balance. Example: with each level, all your achievements and level-ups and lives are cancelled, but your opponents don't). As a result, at level 2-3 you have 3-4 attack and your opponents have 30-40! What kind of weirdo, excuse me, came up with this? Another example: you have a 50% chance to dodge, but in the end all the hits on you (I had 6-7 of them) hit their target. Overall, the picture is good, the idea is good, but the execution, to put it mildly, is not very good...

Would not recommend at it's current state. The humor is fine, the card game isn't that bad... the two major issues are. 1) The Bird enemy. when you face any encounter that has three birds most of the time you will lose. This is made worse as NORMAL ENCOUNTERS past the second stage can have you face two birds which can then spam the field with 3 birds easily since there are only two enemies... and you have RNG to determine if you have the cards needed to win. 2) The food resource... it is hard to get, hard to deal with, and made worse since most of the Bird Advice is to use the wagon cannons... which requires food to work... and no Food = no cannons. Every fight adds a gnome to your part upping the food cost unless you pay 30 gold to reject the gnome. Food has to be bought costing 25 coins... unless you gained the one ranged card that on a crit adds 6 food. Part of the reason why the Ranger for the gnomes is considered a main as you need to try making the infinite food loop of not harming an enemy except by crit rang food harvest attack. Though even a 20 food cost starting army can easily hit 50 food cost near the end of the map... so if you run into birds that means your deck clogged down from random cards can prevent you from winning... against three birds when you could have actually defeated the boss instead of facing the never ending and always looping bird swarm. Maybe it gets 'easier' with more cards... but the fact the birds keep making the game worse... means they either need a nerf, the food gathering needs a buff, or there needs to be a guide that can actually explain how to get past them least RNG is the only thing determining if you are lucky in avoiding the birds to beat the boss or if you lost another run because of the infinite bird enemy blockade. This is early access and while it has some fun ideas... it has two major problems... and the birds compound the issue since they are a common foe that can appear on every map.

abandonware apparently

IMO everything about this game is great, except balance and translation. The balance issues make the game frustrating. The loading screen suggestion of try changing your squad in camp is insulting. You might be 45 minutes into an otherwise successful run and then you randomly hit a group of enemies that have some combination of abilities that your deck can not overcome. Changing your squad literally means starting over and wasting another 45 minutes. Progressing in the campaign means 1) you've setup a decent deck and 2) RNG was in your favor or 3) you have tried and failed enough that meta-progression has offset RNG enough to eek out a win. Compared to something like Slay the Spire. In STS, as the player, you always feel like you are in control. Even if you have RNG setbacks, you know that your greed vs safe choices led you to your position. In UOG you don't have that type of control, RNG just has too much weight to the outcome. There are no greed vs safe choices to evaluate. Most of the choice you can make are trial and error sequence based. If you've seen the event before and you memorized a successful sequence you repeat it, otherwise you are going in blind and the choice is literally click "go left" or "go right". The translation issues seem to be pretty rare are really not that bad, but they do make understanding the rules of the game more confusing. IMO this game needs balance polish, until then, for me personally, its too frustrating to put time into.

If Slay the Spire drank vodka and watched Shrek on loop for 24 hours straight, you’d get this.

Why is it worth playing this game?: - The design of the game and the colorfulness of the picture are great. - The same humor as in the entrance in 2004 when playing superhero cards - The gameplay is not violent, but thoughtful, it's not enough just to click on the mouse. - A lot of content, if updates arrive, the game can become endless. I recommend it!

This is what happens when Slay the Spire, Darkest Dungeon, and a fairy tale fever dream collide at high speed. I didn’t expect much. But turns out, managing your sausage rations while commanding a wagon of tiny anarchists through cursed forests is… oddly therapeutic? Combat is tight. Positioning matters. So does resource planning. It’s not just a comedy game - there’s legit strategy here. The variety of cards and interactions surprised me. You’ll fail a few runs early on, but once you learn to work with modifiers and wagon upgrades, it clicks. Can’t wait to see what they add next. Highly replayable and refreshingly original. Would I recommend it? If you've ever wanted to overthrow a fairy tale regime with cards and gnome rage: yes. Yes, you should.

Love the theme, but the game is too hard. All paths blocked by dying on the first battle. Tried various layouts too much incoming DPS not enough DPS on my team.

Gets boring pretty quickly

I was given this game for free because I'm a streamer *hairflip* - But th is game is super cute and actually fun. I really like the combat I highly suggest it. ITS GREAT!

gameplay mechanics are really basic

A Card Game KING review

Union of Gnomes introduces a few new novelties compared to other roguelike deckbuilders that all hit differently. Well, let's start with the roguelike part. The game isn't quite a roguelike, as it has sort of a campaign, but dying will only reset the current mission attempt, not your overall progress. Outside of that, there are permanent upgrades which make the game easier over time. In the flood of roguelike games, it's nice to see an island where you can take it a bit easier and I quite liked the change of air. The other novelties that the game introduces are not my favorite unfortunately. Wieners are a resource that you spent on moving, and temporary lose cards if you don't have enough. But you will never have enough so sometimes you will lose a strong card right before a big battle. You can also use them for active abilities (like permanently available potions) which was far more fun, but barely had the resources to use them. The other mechanic I didn't quite enjoy is tying mana to cards. I always thought that was the biggest downside of MTG, and the game shares the same pain points. Sometimes you won't draw mana cards when you need them, sometimes you will draw too much of them. Unfortunately, mana cards are also rare for some reason, making it even more difficult to support mana hungry decks. Thankfully mana stays between turns, so it's slightly more manageable. Overall, the game feels fine: the animations of gnomes are fun, the gameplay solid and the setting unique. However, the wiener and mana systems are more fiddly than fun, there aren't very interesting card combos and it doesn't feel like there are a lot of interesting choices to make. One example, is that after battles you get more cards, but in order not to take a card you have to pay with gold (other games usually compensate you). When all of the cardchoices are bad, this means the choice is between making a worse deck or making a worse deck (as I could spend gold on upgrades). Not a fan of that. Overall, it's a solid entry but some systems feel like they could seriously be tinkered with.

The positive

+ Silly Gnome animations. + Solid gameplay. + No big loss of progress on loss and a campaign style game with permanent upgrades to heroes.

The neutral

* Wish there were more exciting combos to play with.

The negative

- A mana system that's tied to cards comes with all of its drawbacks. - Wieners feel encumbering. Yes, I will leave it at that.

Conclusion:

Promising game with solid foundations, but currently lacks fun combos and has problematic mana and wiener mechanics. Careful recommendation for now.

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Classmates bullied me for my 5’3’’. Jokes on you, there is a game about my kin!

I never hated birds more in my life

Really want to write a clever butt joke here but can’t think of one