(the) Gnorp Apologue makes town building into a glorious spectacle

I think I might just like games in which lots of particles fly around the screen. That's was a big part of the appeal of To The Core, an incremental game with the spectacle of Vampire Survivors. I think it's now the reason I want to play the oddly named (the) Gnorp Apologue. It's an incremental town builder about... gnorps.

Gnorps want to get rich. To help in their goal, they have a rock. "What is the rock? Irrelevant question," says the Steam page. What matters is that gnorps can hit the rock and it outputs shards, and shards then pile up, where they can be collected by other gnorps and used to buy upgrades or build structures.

Those upgrades can include unlocking gnorps with psychic powers, gnorps that grow flowers, gnorps that build rockets and drones - all of which can be turned towards gathering more shards more efficiently. There's apparently a substantial theorycrafting element to the game, as you pick your way through the upgrade tree and set your gnorps specific tasks.

I'm unlikely to be engaged enough - or smart enough - to meaningfully get into the mathematically optimal way to advance. I'm more interested in the colourful pixels flying around the screen in the trailer. I love swarms of things:

Gnorp Apologue launched on Steam on December 14th and currently has an "overwhelmingly positive" rating after over 600 reviews. It's not available in the Steam winter sale, but it is only £5.19/€5.69/$7. I'll be giving it a go.