Games like Gnomes
If Gnomes is your kind of game, the closest matches are Dwarf Fortress, From Glory To Goo and Final Outpost: Definitive Edition — picked from the ranked list below. Reviewers single out its challenging achievements to pursue, challenging and contemplative. Each pick is ranked by what players of this game also play, shared genres and tags, and review-mined similarity — not a generic popularity list.
Get personalized picks →Gnomes is a 2025 strategy game combining turn-based tower defense with roguelike progression. Players build, farm, and defend settlements while exploring procedurally generated biomes that grow more complex as they advance. Reviewers highlight the classic maze-building tower defense gameplay, noting the combination of combo-based combat and economy management creates fresh strategic depth. Players describe the experience as funny and lighthearted, with humorous gnome and goblin designs that add charm to the fantasy setting. The game emphasizes backtracking and faction variety, offering challenging achievements and deep tower-relic synergies for players seeking strategic depth. Available for $9.99, Gnomes runs Playable on Steam Deck and holds a 96% positive rating from over 1,300 Steam reviews.
About Gnomes: Gnomes is a turn-based tower defense with deep roguelike progression, set in ever-expanding, procedurally generated biomes. Build, farm and defend your village as you push deeper into goblin-infested territory. Unlock powerful upgrades and craft your environment to survive the endless goblin horde
Players who liked Gnomes also play
Steam players who put hours into Gnomes also tend to own these titles — a signal called collaborative filtering. imho.run cross-references millions of library ownership patterns to surface games whose real audiences overlap, regardless of whether their genre tags match.
Dwarf Fortress
WHY THIS
Shares procedural generation and a challenging mood with Gnomes.
Top pick for Gnomes fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy and Indie with Gnomes.
Build a fortress and try to help your dwarves survive against a deeply generated world. Keep your dwarves happy, grow their community and beware of digging too deeply. The deepest, most intricate simulation of a world that's ever been created.
From Glory To Goo
WHY THIS
Shares tower defense, base building, roguelite and a challenging mood with Gnomes.
Second-strongest match for Gnomes fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Gnomes.
From Glory To Goo is a Sci-Fi survival RTS set on an alien world. Serve as humanity's bulwark by establishing a colony and supporting your colonists still in orbit. But beware, for The Goo, a relentless and shape-shifting force approaches from all sides, even above and below.
Final Outpost: Definitive Edition
WHY THIS
Shares base building, resource management, indie and a nostalgic mood with Gnomes.
Third-strongest match for Gnomes fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Gnomes.
Final Outpost is a survival strategy base-builder. You lead the last survivors of the apocalypse. Assign roles, craft tools, and manage resources carefully. Construct buildings, level up your citizens, and fortify your town against hordes of zombies. How many days can you survive?
Timberborn
WHY THIS
Shares a whimsical mood with Gnomes.
Ranked #4 for Gnomes fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy and Indie with Gnomes.
Humans are long gone. In a world struck by droughts and toxic waste, will your lumberpunk beavers do any better? A sandbox city-building game featuring ingenious animals, vertical architecture, water physics, and terraforming. Contains high amounts of wood.
Rise to Ruins
WHY THIS
Shares procedural generation and a challenging mood with Gnomes.
Ranked #5 for Gnomes fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy and Indie with Gnomes.
A brutal godlike village sim that melds the god game, management, and tower defense genres! Fight off hoards of monsters at night, and expand your village in the day time. Inspired by games like Black and White, Rimworld, and Dwarf Fortress but not quite like any of them.
Stronghold: Definitive Edition
WHY THIS
Shares a nostalgic mood with Gnomes.
Ranked #6 for Gnomes fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Gnomes.
Greetings sire! Your stronghold awaits you. Build a castle economy, besiege unforgettable villains and return to the 'castle sim' that started it all. Experience this classic RTS with upgraded visuals, modernised gameplay, Steam multiplayer and a new campaign.
RimWorld
WHY THIS
Shares procedural generation and a challenging mood with Gnomes.
Ranked #7 for Gnomes fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy and Indie with Gnomes.
A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.
Pioneers of Pagonia
WHY THIS
Shares a nostalgic mood with Gnomes.
Ranked #8 for Gnomes fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Gnomes.
Rebuild hope in a world that was lost in the fog. Lead your Pioneers across the isles of Pagonia, unite scattered tribes, raise thriving communities and discover the history of your people as you reclaim your world in the new story campaign.
Reviewers mention these as similar to Gnomes
Surfaced from review text: when other players write 'if you liked X, try Y', we catch the name and resolve it back to a Steam game.
Plants vs. Zombies GOTY Edition
WHY THIS
Shares a nostalgic mood with Gnomes.
Reviewers of Gnomes cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Strategy with Gnomes.
Zombies are invading your home, and the only defense is your arsenal of plants! Armed with an alien nursery-worth of zombie-zapping plants like peashooters and cherry bombs, you'll need to think fast and plant faster to stop dozens of types of zombies dead in their tracks.
Worms
WHY THIS
Shares a funny mood with Gnomes.
Reviewers of Gnomes cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Strategy with Gnomes.
Throw a grenade down memory lane with the original and classic turn-based strategy game Worms™! Up to 4 teams of worms do battle over an ever-changing battlefield with falling weapon crates, crazed exploding sheep and more besides. Winner of many industry awards, find out what all the fuss was about.
Orcs Must Die!
WHY THIS
Shares a funny mood with Gnomes.
Reviewers of Gnomes cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Strategy and Indie with Gnomes.
Slice them, burn them, skewer them, and launch them - no matter how you get it done, orcs must die in this fantasy action-strategy game from Robot Entertainment.
Slay the Spire
WHY THIS
Shares procedural generation and a challenging mood with Gnomes.
Reviewers of Gnomes cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Strategy and Indie with Gnomes.
We fused card games and roguelikes together to make the best single player deckbuilder we could. Craft a unique deck, encounter bizarre creatures, discover relics of immense power, and Slay the Spire!
Module TD. Sci-Fi Tower Defense
WHY THIS
Shares a retro mood with Gnomes.
Reviewers of Gnomes cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Strategy and Indie with Gnomes.
This is Sci-fi Tower Defense created by gamers for gamers.
Vampire Survivors
WHY THIS
Shares procedural generation and a challenging mood with Gnomes.
Reviewers of Gnomes cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Indie and Casual with Gnomes.
Mow down thousands of night creatures and survive until dawn! Vampire Survivors is a gothic horror casual game with rogue-lite elements, where your choices can allow you to quickly snowball against the hundreds of monsters that get thrown at you. Be the bullet hell!
The Settlers: New Allies
WHY THIS
Shares economy management, base building and a nostalgic mood with Gnomes.
Reviewers of Gnomes cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Strategy with Gnomes.
The Settlers®: New Allies is a strategy game with an in-depth build-up experience and real-time strategic battles.
Cheaper alternatives
Games in the same vein priced at least 40% below Gnomes at current Steam store prices.
Garry's Mod
WHY THIS
Priced ~50% under Gnomes on Steam right now. Shares Indie and Casual with Gnomes.
Garry's Mod is a physics sandbox. There aren't any predefined aims or goals. We give you the tools and leave you to play.
Vampire Survivors
WHY THIS
Shares procedural generation and a challenging mood with Gnomes.
Priced ~50% under Gnomes on Steam right now. Shares Indie and Casual with Gnomes.
Mow down thousands of night creatures and survive until dawn! Vampire Survivors is a gothic horror casual game with rogue-lite elements, where your choices can allow you to quickly snowball against the hundreds of monsters that get thrown at you. Be the bullet hell!
Cookie Clicker
WHY THIS
Priced ~50% under Gnomes on Steam right now. Shares Strategy and Indie with Gnomes.
An idle game about making cookies! Originally released in 2013 on the web, and actively developed since then. This is the official version for Steam.
WEBFISHING
WHY THIS
Priced ~50% under Gnomes on Steam right now. Shares Indie and Casual with Gnomes.
WEBFISHING a multiplayer chatroom-focused fishing game! Relax and fish (on the web!)
POSTAL 2
WHY THIS
Priced ~90% under Gnomes on Steam right now. Shares Indie with Gnomes.
Live a week in the life of "The POSTAL Dude"; a hapless everyman just trying to check off some chores. Buying milk, returning an overdue library book, getting Gary Coleman's autograph, what could possibly go wrong?
Plants vs. Zombies GOTY Edition
WHY THIS
Shares a nostalgic mood with Gnomes.
Priced ~50% under Gnomes on Steam right now. Shares Strategy with Gnomes.
Zombies are invading your home, and the only defense is your arsenal of plants! Armed with an alien nursery-worth of zombie-zapping plants like peashooters and cherry bombs, you'll need to think fast and plant faster to stop dozens of types of zombies dead in their tracks.
Buckshot Roulette
WHY THIS
Priced ~70% under Gnomes on Steam right now. Shares Indie with Gnomes.
Play Russian roulette with a 12-gauge shotgun. Four enter. One leaves. Roll the dice with your life. Good luck!
Brotato
WHY THIS
Priced ~50% under Gnomes on Steam right now. Shares Indie and Casual with Gnomes.
Brotato is a top-down arena shooter roguelite where you play a potato wielding up to 6 weapons at a time to fight off hordes of aliens. Choose from a variety of traits and items to create unique builds and survive until help arrives.
Free alternatives
Free-to-play games that recommended players of this title also tend to enjoy.
Ultimate Custom Night
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie with Gnomes.
Welcome to the ultimate FNAF mashup, featuring 50 selectable characters and custom difficulties!
Grimm's Hollow
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie with Gnomes.
A spooky, freeware RPG where you search the afterlife for your brother. Reap ghosts with your scythe, explore haunted caves, and eat ghostly treats on your journey through death.
Magic Archery
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie with Gnomes.
Train a commoner to become the greatest archer in this short incremental game! Increase your stats, gather wealth from quests, buy upgrades, and infuse your arrows with magic.
Tails Noir: Prologue
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie with Gnomes.
Tails Noir: Prologue is the first act of a post-noir narrative adventure. Become raccoon private eye Howard Lotor and explore dystopian Vancouver inhabited by animals as you uncover a deeply personal story of change and transformation.
If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.
If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers is a narrative-driven point-and-click adventure with horror elements that explores the stories of four characters in a masked ball taking place aboard a train in the late 1920s.
Outpath: First Journey
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie and Casual with Gnomes.
Outpath: First Journey is a prologue chapter of the main game, Outpath. An experimental clicker base building game. Craft, gather & manage resources, build your base and buy more islands to exploit and expand!
Lily's Well
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie with Gnomes.
It is a rainy night in the Spring of 2005. Lily is left home alone after her Papa put her to bed. She is awoken by a cry for help outside her window. It is coming from the well. Help Lily gather rope to go down the well and save the poor soul trapped down there.
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Head-to-head comparisons
Frequently asked about Gnomes
- Does Gnomes run on Steam Deck?
- Gnomes is rated Playable on Steam Deck — it runs, but expect some manual adjustments (control remapping, text size, or graphics settings) for the best experience.
- How much does Gnomes cost?
- Gnomes is listed on Steam at 9.99 USD (current store price; Steam sales may reduce this temporarily).
- What games are most similar to Gnomes?
- Based on Steam play patterns and shared genres/tags, the games most often recommended alongside Gnomes are Dwarf Fortress, From Glory To Goo, Final Outpost: Definitive Edition.
- Who developed Gnomes?
- Gnomes was developed by DYSTOPIAN and published by DYSTOPIAN, Gamersky Games.
imho.run ranks Steam game alternatives using a mix of collaborative filtering (ALS / iALS / EASE / LightGCN), content scoring over genres, categories, Steam tags, developers, and publishers, plus AI-extracted vibes mined from review text. The page above is generated in seed mode anchored on Gnomes.
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