Fenyx4, whom most of you should know as the guy who handles the technical aspects of the Codex of Ultima Wisdom, also works for Groundling Games when he isn’t messing around with Ultima-related things. I actually had a chance to play their game Oh! Gnomes! on his Android smartphone…but I see from his post on Google Buzz that the game is now also available for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch via the Apple App Store.

Obligatory screenshot:

So, some of you may be wondering just what Fenyx4 (“Seth” in real life) did on this game? One of his fellow developers will tell you:

I must say, Seth has been a life saver for this game. He has done all sorts of crazy things. Most importantly, he interfaced Unity (iOS and Android) with Facebook so that players will be able to post their scores to their walls. When he and I were developing it and we kept IMing scores back and forth to each other, it quickly became apparent that having such a feature would be absolutely necessary. He also made Gnome work via Augmented Reality. It is so much fun to play. Absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, we (meaning he) could never get the FPS to an appropriate level. The best I heard was anywhere between 20-25 FPS, which just isn’t good enough. And to top it all off, he performed several user tests. We could figure out what worked and what didn’t. In fact, we removed 2 gnomes from the list because of it. They just weren’t fun.

The game itself is pretty fun. Your character, technically, is a wizard who has appointed a turtle-like creature called a groundling to guard his coins, which have been placed in a decorative (and enchanted circle) in your garden. Unfortunately, gnomes have come with the intent of stealing your coins, and the whole point of the game is to squash, toss, explode, or otherwise prevent the gnomes from stealing too many coins.

As I said, Fenyx4 let me play it a bit; it was pretty darn fun, and looked really good. The ARG mode was also amusing; it’s worth the $0.99 just for the opportunity to have the groundling dance on your computer keyboard rather than his garden circle.

I’ll be picking it up; thou shouldst do the same on thy Android or iOS device. Support a fellow Ultima fan and community contributor!