Resources, guidelines, goals and objectives, are all well and good, but sometimes you just want to vibe. Gourdlets was developed and published, with the help of Future Friends Games, by AuntyGames. In this laidback pixel art town building game, you don’t have to worry about anything except your own personal taste.

Style

The art style of Gourdlets is simple, in the way only consummate artists can achieve. The pastel colors are pleasing, and there’s enough variation to the available items that players have a lot of room for creativity when it comes to theming and color scheme. Even if you’re going for a monotone pallet, you can get variations in of the color of your choice.

The music is peak lo-fi, with chiptune sounds and bright melodies. It’ll cycle through the various tracks as the game runs, so you won’t get stuck with the same song over and over while you create. Inside the buildings you can set specific songs, as well as ambient sounds, which is a fun bit of customization.

Substance

The titular Gourdlets are little beanlike, nubbin creatures. You can customize their color, rename them, and pick out an accessory for them – or no accessory! As they explore their environment, they will mature and bloom. Once they’ve blossomed, you can hover your cursor over them to collect the flower. Get 9 flowers and you can call the Parcel Train, which will arrive promptly to deliver a newly unlocked item.

The Parcel Train and unlockable items is the only real sort of progression, at least in the traditional sense. As it’s a relaxing town building and decorating game, the sense of accomplishment comes from realizing your vision. You also get the added bonus of watching the Gourdlets play around and explore the space.

Not only can you layout and decorate the exterior space of your town/city/settlement, you can decorate the inside of buildings too. I had a lot of fun putting together a train station, and houses for all my Gourdlets. There’s quite a bit of variety and versatility to the inside decorations, as well as the exterior features and buildings.

Potential Improvements

To be perfectly clear, I love this game. Everything in it is well realized, polished, and fun. However, I believe there’s more potential here. I have no idea if AuntyGames is planning on expanding on their vision for Gourdlets, or releasing content updates in the future, but there’s plenty of room for both of those things. I’d love to see more critters we can hatch, more items, and more styles of buildings. I’d especially love the addition of interior windows, and flowers similar to the rocks we can place.

There was one issue I ran into, and only one bug is pretty impressive. When it came to setting music and ambience for inside buildings. I wasn’t able to set songs for each building separately. My selections carried over to every building. I change one, and the rest change to match. This was a tad frustrating, as I was looking forward to picking specific ambience and music for each interior. However, this didn’t particularly impact my enjoyment of the game.

A cute feature I all but overlooked was the seasons and weather. The changes it makes to the game are adorable, and I understand the choice to make them controlled by the player. It might be nice to have the option to toggle “random weather” on, just to have some added variety. But again, that’s merely a suggestion. The lack of spontaneous rain didn’t hamper my enjoyment.

Overall Impression

Gourdlets is a simple, charming, and highly polished addition to the library of laidback games. I highly recommend playing with it windowed as you work and treating it like an idle game – I had it windowed while writing this!

Gourdlets is available on PC and Mac through Steam and retails for $4.99. It released on August 15th, 2024. Future Friends Games generously provided a review key to NeverMore Niche, and played on a Mac.