Gourdlets Guide: First Steps to Build a Cozy Town
I have never been so relaxed playing Gourdlets. I could build a cute town for these adorable little plant-like creatures from scratch and watch them all day interact with my creations. They’re colorful, round, and tiny, and they love doing their things. I have complete freedom to build structures, trees, and activity areas and have more creatures to populate my town.
There are no rules – just you, the creator, and your cute little people that have a mind of their own, but love to mind their own business. They are adorable and wouldn’t hesitate to interact with what you have built. There’s no pressure, no resource management! You just have a good time building and watching your beautiful town come to life with your creations. Like me, you must have been overwhelmed with so many menu choices. My Gourdlets guide may help you get started so that you can get better at building your own quaint town or a bustling city:
Content
The Basics
Setting up the game is pretty basic and straightforward. You have three starting maps – basic, beach oasis, and the maze. Choose any one map that complements your cozy requirements. I love the beach oasis as I can see the little creatures soaking up the sun or fishing. After naming your town, you are ready to build and populate it with tiny people.
Gourdlets is a sandbox town builder, but the main attraction is its creatures – cute, laidback, indifferent to your plans, and willing to adapt and thrive regardless of what their creator builds. You don’t have to worry about their wants and needs, so resource management takes a backseat in this game. But nothing will stop them from interacting with things placed on the map. As they interact with more and more objects, they will mature, giving you access to unlockable items delivered through a special parcel train.
Controls are simple – use WASD or arrow keys to move the camera. You can also click the scroll wheel and drag the mouse. Scroll to zoom in and press the Q or E key on the keyboard to rotate the map.
Menus at a Glance
The game starts with an empty map, and you have complete freedom to build whatever you want, at your own pace.
A list of menus is displayed on the left side of the screen and there’s a number beside each menu icon. Those are hotkeys numbered 1-9. On your keyboard, press 1 to open the build menu, 2 to remove objects and fences, 3 to remove floors, and so on. Here are all the menus and their uses:
Hotkey | Menu and Icon | Use |
1 | Build (Hammer Icon) | Use it to build floors on the island, construct buildings, and place fences, trees, ruins, plants and seedlings, lights, chairs and tables. |
2 | Bulldoze objects and fences (Bulldozer) | Click on it and then click on an object to remove it. |
3 | Erase floors (Garbage Bin) | Choose this and then click on the map floor to erase a block. |
4 | Town Ledger (Booklet) | Shows your town’s current population, and names of gourdlets, and also has a nifty unlockable item tracker. Use the town ledger to find and follow your favorite gourdlet. |
5 | Set Weather and Season (Cloud) | Click on it and then click on an object to remove it. |
6 | Screenshot (Camera) | To enable screenshots, go to settings (gear icon on the left side ) and set the directory/folder under “Screenshots” in the options tab. You can create a new folder in pictures of the desktop and all screenshots will be saved there. Once ready, just press 6 or click on the camera icon to take a screenshot. |
7 | UI settings (Sunglasses) | Lets you toggle grid visibility, hide the menu, display the gourdlet’s name on the island, and toggle the camera focus on or off when the monorail arrives near the island. |
8 | Call Gourdlets (Choo Choo Train) | Press 8 to invite a new gourdlet. A monorail will arrive at the scene, dropping a cute little creature on the island. |
9 | Call Parcel Train (Opened Crate) | Lets you call a special parcel train that contains a unique item. More on parcel train in the next section. |
ESC | Settings (Gear Icon) | Press ESC and you can save your current game or click on settings to change options, such as enabling autosave, stopping certain animations, enabling screenshots, changing controller mode, and sounds, switching to full screen or windowed mode, etc. |
I had a fun time with the build menu (hammer icon), especially with the outdoor floors. I can expand my map by selecting a block and then clicking on the end of the terrain to create more ground. I can also build docks and even paths for my new houses.
Building Your First House
Building houses can be more exciting since you can enter and decorate your house with furniture and decor items. From tents to small houses to buildings and even barns and lighthouses, you can experiment with various buildings and also enter inside them to customize.
Once you build a house/building, you can go inside by clicking on it. I like how the game provides goodies inside each building to give us some inspiration. Just unpack the boxes to find surprise items. You can keep them or use the bulldoze option to remove them and start fresh.
Those cute creatures won’t meddle with your decor plans as they are too lazy to do some work and would be more than happy if someone is doing their work. But they will love to interact with certain furniture items, which will help them mature.
Once you are inside a building, you will find new menu items. The build menu changes when you are inside a house.
Click on it to see new items, such as floor designs, wallpaper, indoor fences, toys, furniture, decor, plants, appliances, chairs, couches, tables, electronic items, food, and leisure items such as piano, record player, microphone, and board games.
You can also bulldoze objects inside a house to remove them. Just click the bulldoze icon and then click on an object to remove. Pay attention to the instructions to undo and redo on the bottom-right corner of the screen. To move objects, right-click on an object and place it in another location.
The third menu item on the left (house icon), lets you enter a new house name, choose a specific ambient sound exclusively for that house, and can even select a piece of indoor music. Under the guest list, you can select who can access your home and keep it locked for others.
I liked the dress code feature for each house. It lets you choose who can enter based on their clothing style. So if you select a wizard hat under “guest dress code”, only a gourdlet wearing a wizard hat can access the house.
After choosing the dress code/ certain gourdlets who can access the house, press “4” to exit the house. Changes will take effect the next time you enter the building.
Make sure you keep “also allow random gourdlets” checked if you want to give unrestricted access to all of them. If you uncheck this, only those selected under “guest list” or chosen dress code can enter your house.
Tips to Manage Your Town
1. Since it’s a relaxing game, it gives a lot of room to experiment with building layouts. Try placing objects in various configurations inside a building to see how the creatures interact with them. This way they will mature faster, and you can call the special items train at regular intervals. Make sure you place more items that can be interacted with, such as gym equipment, television, board games, pianos, and books.
2. Pay attention to how the creatures interact with each object. This can give you some ideas for building spaces that encourage more activities.
3. Some creatures may show preferences for certain objects or activities. Use this to design special areas using only those objects to increase interaction and raise their maturity levels faster. You can build a gym by placing a house and putting all gym equipment in it, or a library by placing only books in a house.
4. I love nature and I was glad those creatures shared my interests. Adding trees and other natural elements on the map added life to my world and Gourdlets loved interacting with them. Besides trees and seedlings, O also placed benches and created a small playground for my creatures.
5. Try to build pathways to connect houses and other places on the map. The creatures will follow paths, which will help you organize the flow of activity in your town.
6. You can pick up a creature and put it close to an object to interact with. Move your cursor over a creature and right-click on it to pick it up. Move it near an object, release it, and see it interact with the object. I did this with one of my cutie gourdies (That’s what I call them). It was sitting idle, so I quietly picked it up and placed it close to the new pepper seedling I just planted near my house. It immediately started tending and watering the seedlings.
Dress Up and Set Up Dress Code
Did you know you can customize every creature? I too was surprised when I discovered this new gameplay element. I only knew to pick up a creature by right-clicking on it, but when I accidentally left-clicked on a gourdie, I saw, to my surprise, a small profile page beside it! There was his name on the top, the maturity bar below it, a separate section to change color, and also accessories to dress him up. See the screenshot below, you will find something like this when you click on a creature:
The maturity bar fills up whenever the creature interacts with the object. Changing “body color” lets you give a unique personality to a particular gourdlet.
The accessories part is where things get more exciting. You can equip cool accessories to a creature and then set up dress codes in each house for them.
For the dress code part, Try this:
Click on a creature and equip it with any accessory, such as a wizard hat. Build a house and enter. Once inside the house, click on the third menu (home icon) on the left and scroll down a bit until you find “guest dress code”. select wizard hat from the list and uncheck “also allow random gourdlets”. since you have set up a particular dress code, only that character wearing a wizard hat can access this house.
Get Goodies from the Parcel Train
Gourdlets are cute, but they are a careless, laid-back bunch, so expecting some kind of confrontation or revolt from them is next to impossible. But they do interact with certain objects in the house, which makes them “mature”.
Placing gym equipment ( house > build > misc), electronics items, televisions, etc. in your buildings is the best way to make gourdlets interact with them, and this increases their maturity.
The more mature are these creatures, the faster the parcel train bar fills up. You can see the bar fill up bit by bit on the left side.
Once the bar fills up, press “9” to call the parcel train. A monorail brings a surprise special item as a gift and drops it on your island. Click the box to get your item.
Calling the Gourdlet Train
I was bored with just one gourdlet fooling around the town until I saw an option that lets you invite more creatures to your town. Yes, it’s the “Gourdlets Train”. Press “8” on your keyboard to call the train and get a cute random creature to arrive in your town. If you want to know its name, make sure you check “Display gourdlet name” in the UI settings (sunglasses icon).
I am loving this game so far and discovering new things every day. will keep you posted if I find something new and adorable, until then I hope this mini guide will help you get started with Gourdlets! If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comment section below and I will be more than happy to answer them.
