Developed by Irox Games and published by Untold tales, EcoGnomix is a combination of a base builder and a strategy combat game with roguelike elements. Have you ever had the thought of a quirky name that could be used as a pun? Well it looks like that happened here and Irox have taken the pun name to heart – but the challenge would be how would you make economics involving gnomes fun?
You are in charge of a small gnome village above the caves below where precious resources lay waiting to be harvested. However, you are massively under prepared, so you need to develop your village to make your exploits in the caves more successful. There is wood, food, and gold among other resources in the caves you need to explore. But you also need resources for your exploration and those crafty bats that inhabit the caves also like to take some of your resources, so your harvesting skills better at their optimum as EcoGnomix is not very forgiving.
But as mentioned it has roguelike aspects so you are supposed to fail upgrade and improve if you want to progress, though it is not always as simple as that. As you explore the cave there are different paths that you can choose between and it shows as an icon for what to expect in that path. By this I mean it could be food dominant, wood dominant, it could contain a chest, or it could be a gnome shop where you can purchase some temporary upgrades for the expedition you are on.
Every decision you make is crucial and every move you make is critical. As you enter an area you faced with a large hexagonal grid which contains resources, enemies, and land. Your gnomes have particular skills; for example, your first gnomes are either an axe gnome who can fell trees for wood resources and attack enemies in the area, or you have an archer who can harvest the food resources which are usually animals like chickens or deer. You have to place your pieces next to the resources they can harvest or they wont do anything when the turn starts. They also have to be standing on land which I know sounds obvious but if you don’t move a piece to be on land then they will get hurt when you start the turn. When you are happy with how you have placed your pieces you start the turn and your gnomes and other beings on the area play out their actions. The wood you gather will be used to hire more gnomes to help gather more resources. The food you gather will be used to keep your exploration team fed and at the end of every turn the bats will steal some food. If you don’t have enough food for the team and the bats then the plug is pulled on the expedition and you come back out of the caves with the resources you have gathered on the journey.
With those resources you bring back to the surface you can use to upgrade your village by buying special buildings who can convert resources into useful items or they can help upgrade your gnomes to make other skilled gnomes available or allow you to hire more gnomes on the expedition. Some upgrades allow you to take a chunk of resources down with you on the next expedition to give you a head start which you will desperately need. If you are tactical enough and earn enough upgrades to aid your expedition to the max then you should be equipped enough to make it to the bottom of the caves and fight the boss.
This is where the game loses me a bit as there are too many things to juggle to make this a fair fight. It is not just placing your gnomes in the correct position to attack the boss because at the end of each round the gnomes still need to be kept fed and the bats still take their share. There are resources on the boss area for your gnomes to harvest but the balance is out and you can never harvest more resources than you lose. So you either have to have the luckiest run and stock up on so much food and wood that you can focus on the boss in the final area or you have to pray for a miracle that the resources last. Even if you did manage to pull it off and defeat the boss it doesn’t end there. You have to do it two more times to unlock the next biome and I am sad to admit I could not do it.
I beat the cave boss twice but I cannot do it a 3rd time as the boss has more health and lasts longer. I have harvested so many resources that I have bought every upgrade possible for the village and bought every new building possible,, but I still can not progress. I put in a good few hours trying to finally beat that last boss I just couldn’t. Maybe I am doing something wrong but this kills your enthusiasm quite heavily when even maxed out on all the upgrades it’s still super tricky to progress. I just feel EcoGnomix needs a bit of balancing as I know the roguelike pattern is you get a bit stronger and wiser and do better next time. But each exploration is randomly generated so there too much reliance on luck and I struggle with games like that. You could be the most skilled but unless the run falls favourably you won’t have any chance.
Conclusion
EcoGnomix I thought looked like a novel tactical strategy game but it just reiterates the saying looks can be deceiving. It has a lot of charm about it and graphically looks interesting. But the deep difficulty curve will just turn people off.
This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox Series X/S (via a Game Pass Ultimate subscription). All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version.Want to keep up to date with the latest Xt reviews, Xt opinions and Xt content? Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
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