Gnome Defenders

Thumbnail
Selfie Mode with GenAI NPCs
Lobby
Amethyst Level
Sapphire Level
Ruby Level
Next Levels UI Pop-up
Lore Explanation (Intro)
Upgrade Panel
Victory!
Dark level - Gnome's POV

A long time ago, in an office far, far away a team of creatives had a brainstorming session about what makes a good mobile game. We came up with 4 pillars: pleasing visuals, easy to follow plot, competitiveness and motivational frustration. Inspired by the gnome statues that are the main attraction of Wrocław, the city we are from, Gnome Defenders was born. While building the game, we kept the user experience in mind, from the hand-painted intro panels to the stylized UI of the game. We wanted the players to be fully immersed in the story. Our biggest challenge was time, we found out about the competition a month prior and as ambitious as we are, we simply tried to do too much. We had to scale back and be realistic in what we are able to deliver in this timeline, choosing what mattered most while remembering our 4 pillars. One thing we know for sure, we are not done with Gnome Defenders, we fell in love with the world and characters we created. Also, the gameplay is so enthralling that we literally cannot stop playing. After the judging period is done, we want to add more levels to the game and expand the Upgrade mechanic, allowing players to not only make their towers stronger but also to be able to customize how their kingdom looks. Utilizing the built-in AI system will let us give our charming NPCs even more character and lore, so everyone can enjoy their presence and learn more about the gnome world. Our improvement list is long, but we believe that our concept will bring people many hours of joyful gameplay, healthy competition and just a tad of motivational frustration. Go, go Gnome Defenders!

Built With

Submitted to

Meta Horizon Creator Competition: Mobile Genre Showdown - Reloaded
- Winner Creator Community Favorite

Created by

So you've seen this super cool Trailer Video? That is my doing! The whole team worked so hard on creating the game and making it happen on time that I wanted to help them with presenting it the best and engaging way possible.

Also, I was a little part of ideation at the beginning too and I created the GenAI levels and 3D models to make the flow of the visual story a little bit better.

I hope you enjoyed it and had so much fun!

Mateusz Owi Owsiany
Creative Director and CEO @MPMTeam
I took on the creative direction and managed the project, as well as copywriting, using Gen AI to generate textures and a few SFX. Working on this game for the past month with my team was an absolute pleasure, we shared so many laughs while play-testing our Gnome Defenders. I hope you enjoy it as much as we have!

Paulina Bogińczuk
Creative Project Manager
The coding of the whole experience was my part. Every system and mechanic was made by me with use of powerful Meta Horizon's API based on TypeScript. It was awesome learning experience that broaden my coding horizons (pun intended :P) as well as a lot of fun to experiment with API's features and how we could use those to our advantage while developing game mechanics. The use of Gen AI's assistent was huge time-saver. I am not realy the type of person who relay on generated code but whenever I had a question in mind if something is possible to do with Horizon's API I could quickly ask assistant to explain to me how it works and thus give me a quick feedback if the thing I want to pursue is actually doable. Its so much efficient than searching for answers in documentation (which I did anyways ofcourse to confirm if the explanation was accurate). Without it I believe
there wouldn't be even half of the mechanics and systems as there is right now. I realy hope you all enjoy playing and dominating the leaderboards, and that the gameplay is fun! We poured a lot of heart and hard work to make it happen :D

Mateusz Baranowski
3D Artist

Szymon Jokiel
I created the game’s lore and concept arts as well as the game’s 2D visual design, such as: UI & HUD design (menus, stamina bars, health indicators, command screens), tutorial & onboarding graphics (instructional screens, feedback visuals).

Wiktoria Łebek
UI Designer, Graphic Designer, Concept Artist