Gnomitaire

I love everything Arnold Rauers and his team creates and appreciate them releasing this ad-free gem. Why they’ve decided to create a free game, I don’t know, but I would hope that they enjoyed making it, because I can’t imagine they are making any money from this at all. So to all of you complaining about how this game isn’t a masterpiece, go buy Card Crawl or Maze Machina, or any of their other great games and realize that gnomitaire is probably *just* a pleasant, free, short game with great design to hold the casual gamers over until this pandemic ends.

The challenge ranking system is terrible when you get up to higher ranks. It would be understandable if it got harder to progress as you rank up, but I just won a challenge and got 0 points from it. The formula needs some sort of tweaks. Also, I’ve had challenges that somehow end up with 11/10 people and don’t end until the time limit runs out, and challenges that stop at 10/10 and also don’t end until the time limit runs out. (Good job making sure the game doesn’t literally break, but I would really appreciate if I didn’t have to wait an extra 8 hours to play a challenge, given that I can only have 3 active at a time.) Other than that, the game is pretty great, but challenges are kinda terrible sometimes.

No ads. No in-app purchases. Simple. Engaging. A treat for the brain and eyes (art style is fun and interesting). Do I wish there was more to the app? Of course. However, this is a free app for a simple game with endless replayability. My only frustration is not understanding why some cards match up and others don’t. I feel the tutorial is lacking this critical information. This lacking is also preventing me from enjoying the “Expert” mode. If this minor issue can be addressed and solved, I will gladly bump up my rating to 5 stars.