Although I'm not very well versed in the genre, (the) Gnorp Apologue is a cute lil' idle/incremental game with a surprisingly extense layer of stategy with a lot of visual flair to it, and unlike others it actually has an end goal that's attainable for the casual player and, overall, is a fun time.

As you're tasked with leading your Gnorp creatures with putting shards from the jelly-bean looking rock into resources to use for different buildings, housing to recruit more Gnorps or weapons and utilities to hit the rock even harder in order to cause a Compression Event, you notice how there's a lot of ways to go about it if you prioritize certain units over others. It's a pretty fun time waster, and also sorta challenging in the endgame to figure things out. And that is probably its biggest hold back, it can get tedious to do stuff near the end due to how slow progression gets at that point, but if you're nearing the end you most likely already have a pretty extense knowledge of your buildings, units and prestige upgrades, so in all it becomes a pretty satisfying experience to finish.

A pretty neat surprise to close off 2023.

El primo segundo del Cookie Clicker.

Segundazo porque lo hace todo peor, o ya no peor si no mucho más simple. Tan simple que acabas el juego en unas 15 horas (PARA UN JUEGO IDLE) y para hacerte el 100% quizá necesitarías otras 5 más.

Pero le falta contenido, siendo sinceros... Ha sido un poco jarra de agua fría la verdad, no os lo podría recomendar porque le falta content por un tubo.

😔😔

I have a love/hate relationship with idle games, and the hate portion can be summed up with my ardent belief that the creator of NGU Idle shouldn't be allowed near a computer ever again. The ideal idle experience for me is one that takes the purity of manipulating numbers that all other genres obfuscate and mashes it with engaging upgrades, strategy, and an endearing concept. First and foremost, Gnorp Apologue is on the good side of incremental gaming. It has a very simplistic art style, with your little hardworking gnorps being like 6x5 pixels, but it's fun and satisfying to see those busybodies busybodying around, doing your bidding. Certain upgrades and gnorp professions have synergies which keep you strategizing and not just blindly clicking upgrades, but at the same time it's relatively forgiving; at worst, a bad strategy will have you waste some time.

Here we come to the elephant in the room: does this game respect your time? Yes and no. I truly believe the ideal idle game not only possesses the qualities I listed above, but can also be completed within less than a day of play. All idle games I've played that pass this time limit I find are extending their length beyond what interesting content they have. Prestiging is a basic concept of the genre, but so many have you go through an hours long cycle to make a tiny upgrade, and then you do it all again. Repeat for weeks of your life. Gnorp Apologue is definitely better than most at this - I still felt that I was experimenting and learning new things with each cycle even if all I got for my troubles was one or two more prestige points - but it's undoubtable that the rate of new content thrown at you lowers dramatically after the first few hours.

Here we come to the elephant within the elephant within the room (the first one was hungry): you have to pay for this game to play it. I think this game is worth the money, but all paid incremental games hit this wall. A game about manipulating numbers can only have so many systems and layers until it becomes ungodly complicated and/or require an unworthy amount of dev time. So the rate at which this content is introduced inevitably slows down at a certain point of complexity until you've prestiged enough times to beat it. It took me just over 17 hours (with a fair amount of idling) to do so. I believe if the numbers were fudged so that it took more like 10 hours instead, it would be a more consistently engaging experience. But I don't regret any time I spent with this game. After finishing, I went back to get some more prestige points to see the endgame of my overarching strategy, then got the rest of the achievements, which I don't do that regularly. So overall it won't change your opinion on idle games but, if your views on them align with mine, I think you'll get your money's worth. End of review. Nothing else to say. Nope.




gnorp

One of the finer incremental games you can play, as it emphasized quality over quantity. Visually appealing as you get to actually see the gnorps move around and do the things you assign them to do, instead of just numbers going up or unmoving sprites. The real appeal of this game is the approaches that are available as you work through the skill tree. The Gnorp Apologue encourages experimentation and strategizing how to effectively damage that rock and collect those shards. Endgame gets busy but it's fun to watch.

Easily completed within a week, and the best part is you can always go back to get achievements and try a new "build". The Gnorp is your oyster!

I bought this game because I wanted something to help me get in a rhythm while I was reading for my comprehensive exams. As a clicker, it turned out to be way more engaging than I expected, even if that meant I didn't get as much reading done as I expected. Normally I don't care for games that make you rehash the same part over and over again, but this game implemented its prestige system excellently. Managing the pile so that it compounds on itself at the right time is such an interesting mechanic. It made it where the goal was not just exponential growth, but navigating windows of alternating growth and preparation. Also, adding a new color each time the boulder compacts made the game visually more interesting than I would have expected from the beginning. The prestige system also makes it that when things start slowing down too much, you can simply start over the progression, but the next time you get to where you last ended much quicker. Also, the prestige systems helps you experiment to find the various interesting perk combinations. I didn't quite finish the game, but I what I saw of it was engaging and I enjoyed my time with it.

A simple cute idle game that doesn't waste your time. I'm more familiar with unending exponential idle games like Cookie Clicker which literally never end, and Gnorp keeps things achievable, concise, and doesn't out-stay its welcome.

The game is built around attacking a rock to generate shards and collecting those shards to spend on resources. The pile in the middle grows and if it builds beyond a threshold you go up one tier, the number of shards is halved but their value is doubled. With 10 tiers this makes the task of balancing your damage vs. collection the key to growing your supplies.

The units available are a cute and quirky mix that I won't spoil, but beyond the variety of unlockable structures and ways to affect damage/collection, there's also the traits. By reaching collection rate thresholds you earn special points that can be used on a skill tree of sorts that applies gameplay modifiers. These are key to winning the game so expect at least 3-4 runs and can make the strategy of how you win different - albeit not wildly so.

Overall the graphics are simple, the music is serviceable, and gameplay is enjoyable. In the 2 days I 100%'d it I saw just about everything it had to offer and was ready to stop anyways. There is replayability if you want to experiment with units and the skills but I don't think there's much motivation to. Good for people testing the waters of idle games, but lacking length and breadth for hardcore fans of the genre.