Hit the rock. Strike the rock. Hurt the rock. Crush the rock. Gather your Gnorps. Do it again.
(the) Gnorp Apologue is an Idle Game by (Myco). It tells the journey of the gnorps as they accumulate increasing amounts of shards and wealth from a seemingly-infinite rock. As the gnorps buy more and more upgrades to get increasingly absurd ways to gain more and more shards, the rock begins to fight back...
The game can be downloaded from Steam here
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(the) Gnorp Apologue provides examples of:
- Acid Attack: Puke Flowers are made into green juice, which makes Gnorps that drink it into Spewers that vomit themselves so hard they take off like a rocket, hit the rock, and explode (and survive), covering it in acid. The acid acts as a Damage-Increasing Debuff on the rock, multiplying damage dealt to it.
- Alpha Strike: The "Project: Constellation" Talent makes all X- and Y- rockets no longer home in on the rock but linger in the air until every 20 seconds, at which they all slam into the rock together.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: The "Future to the Back" talent replaces all bullets with arrows. Arrows are more damaging, but are normally not as rapidly fired as bullets.Tooltip: "Let's go back to a simpler time, when arrows were the latest and greatest and the world still made sense"
- Arrows on Fire:
- One option for arrows allows your Gnorps to fire flaming arrows that set the rock on fire and deal damage over time.
- The "Future To The Back" talent allows your Riflegnorps to replace their bullets with arrows, which can be flaming if the player selects it.
- Attack Its Weak Point: The Weakpoint Discovery upgrade allows weakspots to appear on the rock, which can be clicked on to deal large amounts of damage to it.
- BFS: A sword in a stone is slightly larger than the Gnorp wielding it.
- Breath Weapon: The "Fire Breath" upgrade gives Slammers a fire breath attack on the rock at the end of every seventh combo hit. It can be upgraded via the Bullet Breath talent that allows them to breathe gatling gun bullets, which can be further upgraded by the "Future to the Back" talent to make them breathe arrows, the "Deals" talent to double the amount of arrows, then exploding arrows with the rocket arrows in the archery to turn them explosive.
- Cast from Money:
- Drones can carry huge stacks of shards, but will consume 60% of them on the way back to the stash.
- The XY1-AB building runs on shards that your gnorps G.E.E.T. towards the stash, using those shards to create powerful X- and Y- rockets. Depending on your G.E.E.T. percentage, that amount will be sent towards the building.
- The Chosen One: Eventually a sword in a stone is unlocked. Flavor text says that The Chosen One is needed to pull it out.
- Combos:
- The Combo upgrade allows Slammers to perform chain hits on the rock before being blown back, and there are a few upgrades that boost their damage per hit in the chain. There's even one that gives them a Breath Weapon at the end of a 7-hit combo.
- The Timeshift upgrade allows Bombers to perform their attack again by shifting backwards in time when they hit the rock.
- Driven by Envy: A few groups of Gnorps envy the progress of other Gnorps or drones, and as such work harder to one-up them:
- The Mountaineer inspiration for Runners makes them envy the Mountaineers so badly that it makes them carry 10% more per mountaineer just to destroy the tall piles of shards that the Mountaineers love.
- The "Motivation" talent makes Slammers hit twice as hard, adds 5% combo chance, and triggers Meditation's effects without needing to meditate whenever the Runners get past 50% of the distance to the rock to collect shards. The description states: "Slammers will not be ridiculed!"
- Elemental Rivalry: Setting the rock on fire will cancel out any ice effects. However, there's a Frostfire talent upgrade that allows both fire and ice to coexist.
- Enmity with an Object: Once the rock undergoes a Compression Event, the Gnorps start showing a growing displeasure towards it. That being said, the feeling is mutual as the rock itself will start taking back dropped shards on the ground. This culminates in the finale where a railgun-powered rocket containing a drill is launched to land on the rock to make it constantly spit out shards forever.
- Excalibur in the Stone: The Shrine allows you to spend 9 Gnorps to try and pluck the sword Gnorpcalibur out of a smaller stone. The first 8 will perish trying to do so, but the ninth will succeed.
- Grenade Launcher: There's an upgrade of this name that allows Riflegnorps to launch an explosive grenade out once they run out of ammunition. The "Modern Warfare" upgrade turns all their bullets into grenades.
- Irrevocable Order: Unlike most management games, once a Gnorp is assigned to a job, you cannot unassign or reassign them at all other than prestiging and resetting your progress.
- Magikarp Power: Drones. Initially, Drones are a waste of time and money, as they deliver resources but consume 60% of them on the way to the stock, and they die upon a Compression Event. However, unlike Runners, Drones take a fixed height of resources from the shard stacks instead of a fixed amount, and on higher compression levels, each "floor" in a stack amounts to a lot. Add in talents that allow Zygnorps (which fetch resources based on total shard gains) to include the drone consumption amount in their total, and the Zygnorps will fetch massive amounts of resources. There's also the fact that Drones which die in a Compression Event spawn a Baby Drone, which can actually deal some serious damage to the rock, and there's a talent that allows a drone to spawn two Baby Drones on dying.
- Macross Missile Massacre:
- The XY1-AB building constructs X- and Y- rockets from part of your shard gains in order to launch huge storms of homing missiles at the rock.
- The "Rocket Gatler" talent gives a 10% chance to fire a rocket whenever a Gatler bullet is shot. Considering the fire rate of Gatlers or weapons that use said bullets, it will create a nice amount of rockets.
- Pocket Rockets are generated by Bombers when they drop on the rock. Normally, a Timeshift will remove the rockets, but the "Operation: Pocket Rocket Timeshift Retainment" Talent will not only let them keep their rockets, but generate another one whenever they Timeshift. This results in missile spam when they timeshift multiple times.
- Mind over Matter: Zygnorps have "zychic powers" that allow them to telekinetically lift shards from the shard stack and deliver them to the stock. The amount delivered depends on 40% of your current delivery amount.
- More Dakka:
- Riflegnorps attack by firing a hail of bullets at the rock.
- Gatlegnorps attack by firing an even faster hail of bullets at the rock.
- With the "Bullet Breath" talent, Slammers will breathe a hail of gatling gun shots at the rock instead of fire when they perform Fire Breath.
- The Balloon Gunner upgrade allows the Zybellium-collecting balloon to fire shots at the rock. The "Gatling Balloon" talent turns its gun into a gatling gun.
- The "Future To The Back" talent turns all bullets into arrows, which can be combined with the "Deals" talent to double the amount of arrows fired by anything. This makes Gatlegnorps, Riflegnorps, Slammers with Fire Breath and the "Bullet Breath" talent, and the Balloon with the "Gatling Balloon" talent fire twice as many arrows.
- Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups:
- The Accords powerups from the Shrine are normally mutually exclusive and you can only select one. However, the "Gnorpcalibur:Unleashed" talent allows you to pick all three.
- The Timeshift and Pocket Rocket upgrades are functionally this, as Bombers who Timeshift will lose their Pocket Rockets. However, the "Operation: Pocket Rocket Timeshift Retainment" Talent will not only allow them to keep their Pocket Rockets, but will also generate one more Pocket Rocket when Timeshift activates.
- Only one (or no) Inspiration can be picked at a time for stations that have Inspirations. Unlike the Accords and Pocket Rocket/Timeshift, there's no talent that allows you to pick more than one Inspiration.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: Gnorps are ridiculously hardy. Not even smashing themselves into a large rock from a height, or being used as an exploding puke missile will kill them. The only way for Gnorps to die is when they fail to pull Gnorpcalibur out of the stone, the costs of which are thankfully accounted for when you spend 9 Gnorps to find a worthy one.
- Power Up Letdown:
- "Supershatter" is often considered far inferior to regular Shatter from ice, because it loses the accumulated damage multiplier that Shatter gives, instead causing fixed damage.
- Teleport is usually considered a waste of the very limited Zybellium, as the Gnorps need to take a bit of time to teleport to the nearest shard, when walking (or using Time Shift from Bombers) does it much faster.
- Psychic Powers: Or "zychic powers" in this case. Zygnorps are Gnorps that have been exposed to Zybellium, allowing them to float and telekinetically lift shards from the stacks and deposit them in the stock.
- Rock Beats Laser:
- Arrows are more damaging than bullets and there's even a talent that turns all your bullets into arrows, increasing their damage while possibly adding elemental effects.
- The most powerful potential damager in the game however is the Gnorpcalibur-wielding gnorp whenever the Overdrive accord activates, even beating out the damage from Baby Drones and Rockets by virtue of dealing 3% of the damage you did in the last minute.
- It's played straight by the actual rock itself, where none of the Gnorps' technology can actually put it down, not even the weapon in the finale. Not that the Gnorps want to, since it grants resources when struck.
- Shockwave Stomp: Hulks created from a Gnorp drinking red flower juice will stomp near the rock, causing a shockwave that moves shards towards the stash.
- Situational Damage Attack:
- Zygnorps pick up a percentage of what your Runners, Mountaineers and Drones send to the stash.
- The Overdrive Accord makes the Gnorpcalibur-wielding gnorp strike the rock for 3% of the damage you did in the past minute.
- Time Travel: The Timeshift upgrade allows Bombers that hit the rock to shift backwards in time, allowing them to hit the rock again without needing to fly back up. The "Timeshift Delivery" talent allows the Runners and the Arrow Maker to warp forwards 0.5 seconds in time whenever a Bomber activates their Timeshift.
- Unobtanium: After a Compression Event, the rock will eject out Zybellium, an odd, floating substance that requires rock research to grab and obtain. It's also very skittish too, as hovering your mouse over it will cause it to flee. Zybellium can be used to purchase several powerful upgrades, but you can only get a finite amount of them as the rock is limited to 10 Compression Events.
- Use Your Head: Slammers attack the rock by warming up then leaping at the rock with their face to knock shards off them. Bombers fly into the air, then perform a Meteor Move on the shard with their heads.
- Waddling Head: Gnorps are creatures that appear to be a box-shaped head on two stubby legs.
