A co-op survival game where trolls aren't just meant to be killed? We don't speak of them as enemies, but as neighbors.
What Kind of Neighbor Will You Be in Trollheim: Gnomes?
What kind of neighbor will you be in Trollheim: Gnomes?
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A deep forest of towering trees can be a scary place, especially if you're only three inches tall. In the co-op PvE Survival game Trollheim: Gnomes, you are a small Sprýg Gnome looking for a new place to live after Odin kicks you out of Midgård.
That house is a dense and dark forest, and you are not the only one who takes refuge there. In addition to foraging, exploring, building homes, and coping with survival systems like cold and hunger, your gnome must contend with other forest dwellers, which the Trollheim developers call väsen.
Väsen can be fairies, sirens, and you guessed it, trolls. But unlike other Hime Trolls I could name, Trollheim Trolls aren't just out to ruin your day with a well-slung tree trunk or fail due to resource depletion.
"When we talk about our NPCs, we don't talk about them as enemies, but as neighbors," says Jojje Dalunde, game director at Off-leash Interactive. "Because they really are, and as you know, you can have good neighbors and bad neighbors. In this game, you as a player can choose to be a good neighbor or a bad neighbor. And the people of this world will react to how you interact with them and how you behave."
In the presentation, the trolls don't look very friendly, warning dwarves who get too close, throwing things at them and swinging their fists. But that doesn't necessarily make them bad people, right? Maybe the gnome is on their turf, infiltrating their homeland, and maybe this troll hasn't had good interactions with gnomes in the past.
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Of course, it's your choice: if you want to attack them instead of befriending them, you can... but isn't the idea of making friends with so-called "monsters" fun? (If I could give gifts to the trolls of Valheim, I definitely would. Anything to stop them from attacking my base.)
It's not the end of the world if you accidentally (or intentionally) antagonize one of your neighbors. "There are ways to befriend Whisen that you may have passed over," Dalvand said. "So if you were a bad neighbor, there are ways to make up for it and find common ground."
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The base building looks cute, as your little gnomes can climb the towering trees and build cute little houses among their thick trunks and tall branches, then zip line them together. Your glider? It is a leaf or a few feathers, because you are so small. You get the picture. Trollheim: Gnomes is coming to early access later this year.
Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. After a few years as a casual freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he wouldn't email them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of unexpected simulation games, mods, and skipping stories in RPGs in order to create his own story.
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