Trollheim: Gnomes Lets You Befriend Trolls Instead of Fighting Them

Ever wondered what it'd be like to be three inches tall in a forest full of towering trees—and trolls? That's the setup for Trollheim: Gnomes, a co-op PvE survival game where you're a wee Sprýg Gnome searching for a new home after Oden drove you out of Midgård.

Your new home is a dense, dark forest, and you're not the only one seeking refuge there. Besides foraging, exploring, building your home, and dealing with survival systems like cold and hunger, you'll have to contend with the forest's other residents—the väsen. They can be faeries, sirens, and yes, trolls.

But here's the twist: Trollheim's trolls aren't just there to ruin your day with a well-swung tree trunk or to be defeated for 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 exactly look friendly—yelling warnings at gnomes who get too close, throwing things, 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.

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? And 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 too, 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. Will you be trying to make peace with the trolls, or are you reaching for a weapon first? What do you think?