One heck of a game

The whole story of the game is somewhat simple but works: You're a gnome who's doesn't like elves stuffing stuff down your chimney, so you place remote controlled wheels on your apartment and start whacking any gnomes that dare try to get too close. Also at your disposal to help rid of the pesky elves are exploding bricks, air strikes, and more.

The game uses really nice looking graphics. The menu looks alright and the background, though very simple looking, is nice. The moving clouds up high in the sky coupled with the falling snow really gives you the sense of "winter" and it looks simply splendid. The elves have nice animations that fit what they're doing. And finally, the explosions look awesome. Watching the elves fly as you hit them with the exploding bricks is so wrong but feels so good.

The game has a nice soundtrack while playing, having what sounds like a retro remix of classic Christmas songs. It seems to really fit the games art style. The game also has some really neat sound effects of a cat screaming, elves yelling, and bricks exploding. But the best part of the sound effects is listening to various comments from the game like "Crikey!" and "Reinforcements have arrived!".

The gameplay is very random but fun. You have to move the building side to side to make your gnome (who is swinging on a bungee cord) whack into elves that are flying to your apartment in sleighs and trying to climb up the side. You can even grab bricks off of your apartment building and throw them at the elves to make them fly fly fly into the sky. Controlling the building works just fine. Aiming your gnome to hit a paticular area is a bit tough, but you start to get the hang of it after a while. You also can call in an air strike which does exactly what it sounds like - bring in an air strike over the entire place. You only have 3, and there are very few ways of getting more air strikes so use these wisely.

The game progressively gets harder and harder as time passes by. More elves start coming and it isn't long before you even have to take care of "present elves", elves that have wrapped themselves in presents that can only be killed by knocking them out of the screen. However, you also can get a bit of extra help to take care of the extra nuisiances. If the cat on the ground makes it to the top of your building, you get an entire brick refill of your building and if it's full you even get a golden brick refill - much more powerful versions of ordinary bricks. A princess pops up every now and then from the building and if you manage to touch her you get a free air strike. And sometimes, an air strike you call in will drop golden bricks! If you manage to get a high enough combo 5 times, you will fill up your "Whoopee" meter. I won't spoil what happens then though - but it's definitely worth getting.

There is no real way to "win" the game - it's all about getting points. It would have been nice if there was an online high score table so people could compete agaisnt each other though, After you finally get overwhelmed by the elves, the game gives you 1 out of 20 "secrets" of the game. Alot of them are very useful and they give you even more ways to completely own those pesky elves. I would give some of them right now, but that would be mean of me to spoil something so worthwhile of getting ;) .

Garden Gnome Carnage is a game that almost anyone can enjoy. Using nice looking graphics, neat sound effects and tons of randomness, it creates one heck of a game experience.

Having a gnome on a bungee cord throwing exploding bricks at elves on a remote controlled apartment during wintertime. What more could you want?