Gardens of Gonzo

Gardens of Gonzo is a pixel art MMORPG that aims to bring back to life the old’school vibe and feel of an RPG while also adding a considerable number of feature layers. It allows you to enter a place where you can fight chickens, raging sheep, champion trolls and build a castle if you want, or a dungeon.

Gardens of Gonzo features pretty good looking 2D graphics that initially make it look cute but it’s a super serious game. Although the latter won’t be obvious until you challenge your first goat to a fight and see just how easily it mops the grass with you. Ok, so to clarify, it’s a serious MMORPG when it comes to gameplay and what you can do but expect a lot of humor and stuff that might not make sense immediately. Which actually means that it’s fun.

The game provides almost everything an RPG player might want. There is melee and ranged combat, skills to learn and perfect, items to equip and use, resources to gather and, of course, a crafting system. It’s all there and whatever is missing will surely be put in since Gardens of Gonzo is in it’s early Alpha stages at the moment and there is a lot of work left.

Gardens of Gonzo experiments on some level with multiple good ideas. One of them is fusing a sandbox game with an RPG. Apart from fighting various types of foes, you can also teleport to a strange place that is unique and accessible only to you and build a home which can look like anything you want it to. Whether it’s a house on a lake, a nuclear bomb shelter you can build it if you have the resources.

One of the many interesting things about Gardens of Gonzo is its resource system. Apart from classic coins which are used to purchase gear and crafting materials, you will also need nails and pixels. Nails makes sense because you need them to build stuff but the pixels part is too good. They are dropped by defeated monsters and are required to place structure objects. Imagine not being able to build a blue chair because you lack the color and not the materials.

Gardens of Gonzo is a lightweight game, smaller than most MMORPGs and yet it seems to offer a lot more. It has a dynamic skill based combat system, creative crafting and loads of humor. It’s exactly the casual RPG that might become addictive.