Trollheim: Gnomes turns Nordic folklore into survival crafting

Trollheim: Gnomes is a new survival-crafting game that shrinks its players down to the size of a gnome and turns the Nordic forest into a sprawling wilderness. Developer Off-leash Interactive announced the game through a press briefing covered by TechRaptor, describing a world built around folklore, exploration and flexible player-made shelters. ¹²

The game follows the Spryg Gnomes after Oden drives them from their homes. They settle in the Dark Forest, where the scale of the environment becomes the central idea: trees become mountains, branches become roads and leaves can serve as parachutes. The forest is populated by creatures including trolls and faeries, alongside the Vasen, powerful beings who can become allies or enemies. ¹

Building a home in the Dark Forest

Trollheim: Gnomes uses the surrounding landscape as a construction kit. Players can gather leaves, twigs, branches and moss to build tools and shelters, including homes inside tree hollows, among the treetops or in other natural spaces. The world is procedurally generated, with the developers presenting freeform construction as a major part of the experience. ¹

The game is designed for solo play and multiplayer co-operation. Players can explore and craft with friends, while the changing relationships with the Vasen are intended to create different outcomes. Off-leash Interactive also says the game will be built to grow over time, with updates shaped partly by player feedback. ¹

A new team with Minecraft experience

Some members of Off-leash Interactive previously worked at Mojang, giving the team experience with the kind of player-led building and long-term updates that helped define Minecraft. That does not make Trollheim: Gnomes a Minecraft replacement, but it explains why the announcement places so much emphasis on making a world players can reshape rather than simply traverse. ¹

The game is listed on Steam, where its official store page provides screenshots of the forest setting. The announcement material does not yet set out a firm release date, so the scale of the world and the update plans are more concrete than the launch timetable for now. ²

Our opinion

The strongest idea in Trollheim: Gnomes is its sense of scale. Turning a forest floor into a landscape of roads, cliffs and shelters gives the survival-crafting format a clear visual identity, while the folklore setting offers more personality than another generic wilderness. The challenge will be making the procedural world and long-term updates feel meaningfully different after the novelty of being tiny wears off.