Wouter & Ymke 
PalinGnomes takes place in a peaceful meadow where gnome tribes come together to sing. That sounds friendly enough. Still, this isn’t a game that feels calm once you start playing. Underneath the cute wooden gnomes, it’s a very controlled placement puzzle where the rules matter a lot, and the board doesn’t forgive mistakes.
You’re all sharing the same meadow, trying to place gnomes for points, but every placement comes with conditions. Size matters. Distance matters. And once the meadow starts to fill up, it gets uncomfortable in a very deliberate way. If you enjoy games where the pressure slowly builds and the board keeps saying “no”, PalinGnomes definitely leans in that direction.
👥 2-4 players, ages 6+
⌛ Playing time: 15 minutes
📝 Designer: Kotori
🎨 Artwork: Kotori
🏢 Publisher: PhantomLab (review copy provided)
Gameplay overview
PalinGnomes is played over several rounds on a modular board made of meadow tiles. With two or four players, the tiles form a three by three grid. With three players, it’s a smaller two by three layout. Each player controls a tribe in one colour. In a two-player game, each player controls two tribes at the same time. Every tribe has small, medium, and large gnomes.
Players take turns placing one gnome, going clockwise. A gnome can only be placed orthogonally next to an existing gnome, or next to the magical spring. The magical spring itself is blocked, and only small gnomes are allowed in the four spaces around it. On the starting player’s first turn of a round, placing a small gnome next to the spring is mandatory. You can only pass if you genuinely have no legal placement left.
Every placement has to follow the size rule. In straight horizontal or vertical lines, gnomes must be ordered small, medium, large, medium, small. No exceptions. Because of this, any orthogonal space next to a small or large gnome can only ever hold a medium gnome if it’s filled at all. And once a gnome is down, it stays there.
There are also colour restrictions. In two- and four-player games, gnomes of the same colour can’t be placed in any of the eight surrounding spaces, including diagonals. In three-player games, this restriction applies only orthogonally, which opens the board up a bit. On top of that, some meadow spaces add extra limits. Magical springs and poison mushrooms block placement entirely. Yellow flower spaces don’t allow large gnomes. Fields of flowers allow any size, but you have to take a flower marker when you place there.
If empty spaces become impossible to use because of the rules, they’re marked with music note tokens to show they’re blocked for the rest of the round.
When the fourth gnome is placed on a single tile, the sharing the happiness rule triggers. The player who placed that gnome has to give one of their flower markers to another player, if they have one. Flower markers are a problem you want to get rid of, since each one is worth minus one point later.
A round ends when no one can place a gnome anymore. Players score based on what they’ve placed: three points for large gnomes, two for medium, one for small, minus one for each flower marker. The starting player changes, and after a number of rounds equal to the number of players, the highest total score wins.
Artwork, components, and visual design
The wooden gnomes are doing most of the work here. They’re thick, solid, and easy to read on the table. Size differences are very clear, which is important, because you’re constantly checking whether something is allowed or not. The colours are bright without being loud, and even when the board gets crowded, it’s still readable.
The meadow tiles are clean and simple. Green backgrounds, small flowers, mushrooms, nothing distracting. Special spaces are clearly marked and easy to recognise, which helps a lot once the rules start stacking up. This is not flashy artwork, but it’s practical, and that feels like the right choice for this kind of game.
The flower markers and music note tokens fit the theme without getting in the way. The scoreboard does what it needs to do, nothing more. Overall, everything feels functional and consistent. It’s a friendly-looking game, even if what it asks of you is anything but friendly.
Our experience
At its core, PalinGnomes runs on two main restriction systems. The first is the size order rule, which turns every straight line into a planning problem. Placing a small or large gnome doesn’t just score points, it creates obligations around it that you might not be able to solve later. The second is the colour adjacency rule, which is especially harsh in two- and four-player games, where even diagonal contact with your own colour is forbidden.
What stood out during play was how often these rules pulled against each other. You try to build something clean and logical, and then another player places a gnome that makes your plan fall apart. No one removes your pieces, but people constantly block options without even trying to. It’s indirect, but very present.
Player count mattered a lot. Two-player games felt the most controlled, mainly because each player handles two tribes. It sounds like more to manage, but it actually gives you more agency and fewer surprises. Four-player games were the tightest. The board locked up fast, and it wasn’t unusual for players to run out of meaningful choices early. Three-player games sat somewhere in the middle, with more breathing room thanks to the looser adjacency rule.
Medium gnomes turned out to be the most important pieces. They keep lines legal and options open. Running out of them too early often meant still having gnomes left, but nowhere sensible to place them. Large gnomes scored well, but they also felt risky. Putting one down too soon could easily come back to bite you.
The special terrain spaces add small but constant decisions. Yellow flower spaces quietly limited scoring potential. Fields of flowers offered flexibility, but at the cost of taking penalties that you then had to deal with later. The sharing the happiness rule sometimes helped with that, but it could just as easily help someone else instead. It didn’t always feel fair, but it did feel intentional.
Our thoughts
PalinGnomes is an abstract placement puzzle that doesn’t rely on complex rules, but it does demand attention. The challenge isn’t learning how it works, it’s judging how much space you’re really going to have later. Misreading that even once can shut you out faster than you expect.
The scoring is very straightforward, which makes the game easy to follow, but also a bit blunt. Big gnomes are tempting, and newer players often go for them without fully seeing the consequences. Flower markers add pressure, but they’re more about avoiding damage than creating interesting scoring opportunities.
Across our plays, the player who stayed flexible usually did better. Keeping options open, being careful with medium gnomes, and not rushing into big placements mattered more than grabbing points early. The game rewards patience, and it doesn’t soften the punishment if you get that wrong.
PalinGnomes won’t click with everyone. It’s quiet, restrictive, and sometimes frustrating in a very deliberate way. But if you enjoy abstract games where the board slowly tightens and every placement feels heavier than it looks, there’s something here worth exploring. Just don’t expect the gnomes to go easy on you.
📝 We received a copy of the game from PhantomLab.
Enjoy Kotori’s small abstract games? We also reviewed OrthoGnomes, another PhantomLab puzzle from the same designer.
