A deep forest of towering trees can be an intimidating place, especially if you're only three inches tall. In co-op PvE survival game Trollheim: Gnomes, you're a wee little Sprýg Gnome looking for a new place to call home after Oden has driven you from Midgård.
That home is a dense, dark forest, and you're not the only one seeking refuge there. In addition to foraging, exploring, building your home, and dealing with survival systems like cold and hunger, your gnome will have to contend with other residents of the forest, which the Trollheim devs call väsen.
Väsen can be faeries, sirens, and you guessed it, trolls. But unlike the trolls in another 'heim I could name, Trollheim's trolls aren't just there to ruin your day with a well-swung tree trunk or to be defeated for their resource drops.
"When we talk about our NPCs, we don't talk about them as enemies, but rather as neighbors," said Jojje Dalunde, game director at Off-leash Interactive. "Because that's really what they are, and as you know, you can have good neighbors and you can have bad neighbors. In this game, you as a player get to choose if you are going to be a good neighbor or a bad neighbor. And the väsen in this world will react to how you interact with them and how you behave."
In the presentation, the trolls didn't look particularly friendly, yelling warnings at gnomes who go too close, throwing things at them, and swinging their fists. But that doesn't necessarily make them bad guys, does it? Maybe the gnome is on their turf, intruding on their homeland, and maybe this troll hasn't had great interactions with gnomes in the past.
Of course, it's your choice: if you want to attack the väsen instead of befriending them you can… but isn't the idea of making friends with the so-called "monsters" a fun one? (If I could give gifts to the trolls in Valheim, I definitely would. Anything to stop them from raiding my base.)
If you accidentally (or purposefully) make an enemy of one of your neighbors, it's not the end of the world, either. "There are ways to befriend väsen that you may have crossed," Dalunde said. "So if you were a bad neighbor, there are ways to make amends for it and find common ground."
The base-building looks nice, as your tiny gnomes can climb the towering trees and build elegant little homes amidst their thick trunks and long branches, then connect them with ziplines. Your glider? It's a leaf or a few feathers, because you're very small. You get the picture. Trollheim: Gnomes is coming to early access later this year.