The Best Idle Game I’ve Ever Played (The Gnorp Apologue Review)
Idle games don’t have the best reputation in the gaming community. Many see them as nothing more than mindless timewasters, but there have been a few titles that have elevated the genre into something unique and innovative. The Gnorp Apologue is one of the best examples of this that I’ve ever played.
The premise is simple. You’re in charge of little creatures called Gnorps who are trying to destroy a boulder. When you click the boulder or have Gnorps attack it, the rock produces crystal shards that can be collected and used to purchase upgrades for your Gnorps or additional housing to increase their population. You’ll need to divide your units between attacking the boulder and collecting the shards being produced, and balance the upgrades you purchase for each group.
Unlike many other idle games, The Gnorp Apologue has a definitive end goal and can be beaten in a few dozen hours. When the pile of shards reaches its maximum height, the shards will compress into a denser form that provides more resources when collected but also requires more damage to produce. Your goal is to compress the pile nine times, which will allow you to purchase a rail gun. Then you build the pile of shards to the maximum height one last time and fire the rail gun to destroy the rock and win the game.
Beating The Gnorp Apologue requires a surprising amount of strategy. Some upgrades that are useful in the early game become detrimental towards the end, and some of the weakest weapons in the game can become extremely powerful with the right upgrades.
Each time you compress the shard pile you earn a special mineral called Zybellium which allows you to purchase the most powerful upgrades in the game. But you never get enough Zybellium to unlock everything, so you need to be strategic regarding which upgrades you buy and which ones you ignore.
You can also receive talent points by increasing your damage rate to certain thresholds. These can be used to buy permanent boosts, but you have to reset your progress and start a new run in order to use them.
The game has a charming minimalist aesthetic, with bold splashes of color invigorating its simple black-and-white world. It can be mesmerizing to sit back and watch the busy little Gnorps go about their work, especially in the late game where things get really chaotic.
Like most idle games, it’s often better to leave The Gnorp Apologue running in the background while you do something else, and check in periodically to buy any newly available upgrades. According to How Long to Beat, it takes around 16 hours to finish the game, but your mileage may vary depending on how actively you monitor your progress.
The Gnorp Apologue isn’t perfect. Many of the upgrade descriptions are overly wordy and it can be difficult to figure out exactly what they do. You unlock a speedrunning mode after beating the game, but there isn’t any sort of endless mode. If you aren’t into speedrunning, there isn’t anything to do in the post-game. And there’s no way to unlock all the upgrades at once just to see how crazy things get.
Despite these minor annoyances, The Gnorp Apologue is great for anyone who likes idle games. It doesn’t contain any microtransactions or other annoying mechanics so common in games of this genre. If you know someone who dismisses idle games as nothing more than predatory mobile games and clones of Cookie Clicker, this is the perfect game to show them.
I’d love to see the developers build on the foundations of The Gnorp Apologue to create a longer, more mechanically complex sequel. Idle games are a severely underrated genre, so if you have any suggestions of other ones I should check out, please leave a comment.
