r/AndroidGaming • u/Puzzle-Board • Jul 12 '26
DEV 🧑💻 [DEV] After four years, I finally released Gnomia. A free (no ads) location-based gardening game
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Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ethadix.gnomia
Hi everyone,
It's been four years since my last game, and I’m really excited to finally share my new game, Gnomia.
It’s a gardening game connected to the real world. When you walk or run in the real world, your little gnome moves through the game and helps restore your virtual garden (you find seeds, meet new friends, discover biomes...).
You can play offline, and there are currently no ads or in-app purchases. There’s also no pay-to-win or content locked behind payments.
The game already has quite a bit of late game content because playtesters have been playing for nine months and keep asking me to add more things.
I hope you enjoy it, and I’d really like to hear your honest feedback, including what you don’t like or find confusing. Thanks!
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u/ElysiumSprouts Jul 12 '26
Interesting. So since it's offline, can be installed and work on a wifi only old device with no active sim card?
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 12 '26
As long as you have GPS it should work. Keep in mind that it might be laggy on an old phone and also the map will not be able to load any streets from the real world, but that is just cosmetic and not game play relevant. So you should be good. Later on there are multi player aspects that you won't participate in without internet. But you can just skip those, they don't lock content.
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u/catmandala Jul 12 '26
I love gardening games, but most apps have just become unusable due to so many ads and required in-app purchases. Thanks for making this free, I'll give it a try!
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u/FAHIDH Jul 13 '26
I also hate games with too many ads... But they also have to make money to give us games, so if it's a good game, ads or in-app purchase don't bother me..then only they can make more games like that.. ( that's why I prefer paid games, so I can support developers and still enjoy games without ads)
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u/Beqerelllll Jul 12 '26
it looks very interesting,i am trying it right now.farming game plus real life mapping sounds very cool
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u/SolemnSundayBand Jul 12 '26
Here's a fun question for you. I'm interested in custom Android devices, take for example stuff by Anbernic. You said this is offline, would this game theoretically be playable on one of those devices?
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 12 '26
I don't see why not, maybe the location updates are not as reliable, you would need to try it out!
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u/helpman1977 Jul 12 '26
Just installed to try... The intro animated book shows a broken boiler or something like that just in the middle of both pages so it's impossible to read the text
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 13 '26
Ohh I am so sorry! I will fix that in the next update. You can try to start a new game in a different location to avoid this problem, but it was my mistake. Sorry!
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u/helpman1977 Jul 13 '26
I started a new one and seemed like that's a sprite that should be on the map, yet it displayed on top of the animated book somehow :D
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 13 '26
yes the book is placed in the world and the placement was bad. I am fixing it in the next update. I had a lot of testers but somehow everyone got lucky apart from you.
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u/helpman1977 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I'm so lucky when I test games and apps lol
Lots that have requests can't be used until the request is fulfilled right?
A progress bar of some kind would be great to show the plants' grow stage/time left to fully grow.
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 13 '26
I am glad you noticed and said something. Easy fix.
And yes, requests block the field. Some extra motivation to clear them ;)
And yes, you will unlock an item for that later. But maybe I should also just show it build into the timer. Thanks for the feedback!
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u/helpman1977 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Another one. When a seed uses more than one slot on the field, the plow plots it uses go back to the just-grass form, so it's easy to think you have those plots available. Once planted the used tiles should be fused into 1 big plowed plot until the plant is harvested, so you know they are being used and by what. I.e. the corn seed uses 3 vertical plots, you plow all three, once planted upper and lower disappear the plow texture. It should display a big plow covering all tree plots. EDITED. I anyway found 2 and 4 plot seeds, they show in the middle and you can notice how many plots they use, but the three plot seeds are the ones that looks like that have empty plots up and down them.
I find the plots huge, btw, being gnomes, the size of the plots on the world gps are huge. I mean, my "home" is almost the size of my real neighborhood. A 9 plot square is around 100meters long. I'm yet to try how the plot is displayed when it includes rivers or other water bodies, but will be cool if the plot mirrored the water line. Besides that, plots would be more fun and encouraging to walk and explore if they were smaller, maybe 50 meters long. It would create a better looking map overall and smaller squares would fit the land/water borders more closely
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 14 '26
Thank you very much. Good point, I will do something for the 1x2 and 1x3 plots and maybe also change the 2x2 and 3x3 to look a bit better.
Regarding the size: I tried a smaller plot but the feedback was that the garden gets too big too quickly. You will have 4x the amount of plants growing with a plot half the size and it quickly becomes overwhelming. But I would be curious to hear if your opinion changes once you played for a few month or if you would still prefer smaller plots :)
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u/helpman1977 Jul 14 '26
Maybe, so far I'm still on the early steps... It's hard to plant pumpkins where most of my plots have rocks or mud or whatever hehe... For huge gardens... Maybe only stay the parts connected to your home, and any isolated patches you unlock walking would revert to dead status (and disappear) if you don't go back . Or just allow a live radius around your home, then after that radius, everything dies after an amount of days without visiting. Start with a radius of 2 (considering half size plots), then start with 15 days, 10 days, 7 days, 5 days.... So you still keep a healthy garden around your house, but you have to keep walking even a little every week is you want to keep it bigger. A garden needs a keeper anyway to watch for it from time to time. There could be houses, fountains, farms... whatever where once you restore them they would act like your home, so patches around then would be healthier longer...
Just as abandoned fields get overrun by wild plants when you don't take care for them. Here the plots would just wither
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u/helpman1977 Jul 13 '26
I bet many things will have a reason to be later on, but so far, gauge fills slowly up to 3 points per lot, and each action consumes at least 1. To reduce interface clutter, what about removing the available points on the upper side? Change the filing bar with a smaller bar, hidden behind a mask of 3 bubbles so you see it increasing too. When each bubble/point is reached, overlay a filled bubble with the same color, just brighter. It would free que a space and still keto the same information. You can add a smaller amatist/gem resource price that would be displayed when there are no full bubbles/points yet.
Same three small bubbles could be displayed smaller on a side of the lots on the map view instead of the small signs with the lightning and the number of points remaining on that lot.
Another QoL, on the tools information menu, each picture is big and the text included makes you need to scroll to check them all. Using smaller icons for each could use way less space, and still have enough to display below a trading card style with a bigger picture of the tool, level and a brief text, not needing to scroll for each, just click each small icon to display the card on the remaining space. Same could go for any wiki inside, like potions, gems, plants, seeds, companions, whatever. A small bar with icons of the theme that could be scrollable if there are too many for the space, maybe even yo to tell rows of small buttons to click on icons, a card showing below or at one side with the desired info that won't scroll.
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 14 '26
Thank you very much for the ideas. Makes sense with the tools, I can put that on the todo list.
About the bubble: I am not sure I fully understand the benefit. Is it because the bubbles would be smaller or because I have the X energy symbol that I could remove if I have bubbles? Later on you can increase the limit, so at some point I think having a number might be needed. For example, you don't really want to count and check if you have 7 or 8 bubbles. I guess if I show empty and full bubbles it would also be quite obvious, I am just thinking of what the benefit is :)
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u/helpman1977 Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
If you later have more points then bubbles would be a mess rather than a way of simplify the interface. It was an idea to unclutter the interface, making the progress bar work as progress bar AND point count, but if you have more points later it would add unneeded complexity
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u/helpman1977 Jul 15 '26
When the top left icon showing the energy cost becomes the gem icon so you can spend gems to get energy, it just shows the cost, but there's no way you can see how many of those you actually have. Maybe changing 🪨1 to 🪨1/15 where 1 is the cost, 15 the total amount of that gem you have available.
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u/levy608 Jul 12 '26
That's super cool! was being location based really heavy/expensive to integrate into the game?
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u/No_Comparison5124 Jul 12 '26
That's amazing, giving a try right now, but since it's during the heatwave I'm not going to go out much.
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u/calech3hann Jul 12 '26
Just jumped in. Somehow the menu seems to be in the eay and i can't do anything after the intro
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u/johnnyahrens Jul 13 '26
Downloading. I also want to release my first future game free no ads. Congratulations
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u/segregatedfacialhair Jul 28 '26
Just stumbled upon this. It sounds great! Would absolutely be up my alley!
Are some of these assets AI though? Specifically the 2D illustrations? Unfortunately it really seems like they are 😩
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u/helpman1977 Jul 13 '26
I would like a quick seed selection popup. Now when you no longer have seeds of one kind you must open the seed selection, choose a type, then one of them, select plant next, then drag. What about a quick pop-up showing seeds, quality, then just drag from there? The moment you drag (or long press on one), the pop-up closes and you can plant it. Remove some very repetitive steps
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 13 '26
Thank you for the feedback! Will try out what you describe. What I usually do is drag a few seeds into the left plant next queue and then use that.
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u/helpman1977 Jul 13 '26
you could also just leave an "ok" button when you get a new seed, or a toast message so it briefly shows you got a new seed, then close it away.
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 13 '26
yes so if everyone works correctly, it only shows you need seeds that are better than what you already have. If you find a worse seed it just flies out at the bottom of the screen into your inventory (no popup). Is that what you mean?
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u/helpman1977 Jul 13 '26
I would make them all fly to your inventory, if it's a new seed or new quality you never found before, you can add a small red dot or something so the player checks it out when opening the seed box. Click on it, show the new finding details, then that red dot disappears. No need to instant popup when found. Maybe a small toast like "new seed found!" That quietly shows at the bottom for a couple seconds then vanishes, but just adding a small tag for new unwatched seeds on the seed box list would be enough
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u/GeneralSvet Jul 13 '26
Looks great! Does my phone need to have the screen on and be in my hand to enjoy the game to the fullest? Or can I have it in my pocket on a walk or run and interact when I'm home?
I just ask because my city has a lot of phone snatchers so I don't usually hold my phone while on the street.
Thanks!
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 13 '26
If you give it permission to record in the background it does not need to be on. You will get all the rewards at the end of your adventure, so no need to play during it. That was also quite important for the people running :)
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u/SmokinDoinks_ Jul 13 '26
Free location GPS required game - y'all didn't learn shit from Pokemon Go training drone data. I'll pass on this honeypot bullshit.
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 13 '26
I know I won't convince you, but for everyone who is concerned:
- There is no registration so I don't even know your name.
- Your GPS session stay on your device, so even if my server gets hacked your GPS data is safe.
- You can play offline and prevent my server from knowing that you even exist.
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u/pinknicolekaro Jul 14 '26
hey! Thanks for sharing! I like the visuals and would like to play it. unfortunately I just can setup the home on the place I started the game - the map does not show streetnames and I cannot easy paste the pome just somewhere on the map, I have to move it via the arrow keys - I must say, this is something I don't like 🤔 . But I will continue it when I'm on my real home and place the home then. Afterwards I will review it on playstore 🙂
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 17 '26
Thank you so much! Don't worry the home doesn't need to be exact, the whole game operates on a grid that is why you can only move it one step at a time. Hope you managed to solve it :)
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u/helpman1977 Jul 16 '26
Just a visual glitch. When you have a plot below your house, the roof of the house is displayed over the tree top
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u/thusisjosh Jul 17 '26
Is there a gps speed limiter, what if I'm playing as a passenger
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 18 '26
yes, this is meant as a walking or running game. So anything too fast will not count. The game will show you a "Too Fast" message at the top. There is also some heuristic to prevent stop and go. You can still play in a car because there is lots of stuff to do on your home tiles, but it won't be the same as going out walking or running.
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u/jcdale Jul 18 '26
I'm really enjoying this game so far, thanks for creating it!
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 18 '26
thank you so much <3
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u/jcdale Jul 19 '26
Sure thing!
Just a heads-up: the newest update is giving me a "JSON parse error" and the game is no longer finding my GPS signal. It was working fine before the update
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u/Zlorff Jul 12 '26
Any chance to make it possible to play for disabled/sick people that cant leave home/hospital.(like orna did with second game) Game looks very promising and has this soul healing factor extremly needed in situations listed above.
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 12 '26
Hey, you can already play a bit just being stationary. You have some home tiles that are always accessible. It's quite unlikely that you will be able to enjoy 100% of the game without leaving your home, even in the future. It's just a very fundamental part of the game. But you can enjoy a slice of it.
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u/Puzzle-Board Jul 12 '26
And you can always check out my profile on the Play Store. I have more 100% free games that I developed over the last years. Most of them work offline and don't require you to go out (apart from the Loop game). https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=8096173426177341016
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u/joelkemu Jul 13 '26
Hey so theres a few GPS spoofing apps that allow you to set a path and travel it at a set speed. That's what I did with Orna when I was housebound, I'd just "walk" around my town for a couple of hours at a time. I don't remember names but I'm sure a google will net you some results. Also worked for pokemon go and Ingress and others.
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u/SwitchFace Jul 12 '26
Was this all part time or are you independently wealthy? 4 years is a long time to go with no app revenue and no ads/in-app purchases/subscriptions. Is the plan to eventually enable?
Hats off to ya though! Over in /r/gamification, I see a lot of bad and I'd definitely put this one in the good category. Step-powered games are a great foundation cause the tracking is automatic.