(the) Gnorp Apologue is a fairly decent "idle" game with a little bit of strategy involved. The core of the game is similar to most idle games – your goal is to collect a resource via idling with the game on, you progress in the game by using said resource to gather resources faster. The “twist” here is that you are doing so by using Gnorps, cute little things that you build various buildings for.
U most of these sorts of games, which are fundamentally designed such that it is just a matter of resetting enough times until you get it to work and yours building are limited by how much income you get, in (the) Gnorp Apologue there's a "population" limit on how much stuff you can build – you have to build housing for the Gnorps, and they get more expensive as you build more of them. You employ the Gnorps doing various things to hit a rock. When you knock enough material off the rock (your damage to the rock exceeds your collection rate), the rock will suck all the material back onto it in a “compression event”, which increases your collection rate, but also increases the rate at which it will passively do so – which can cause you to become stuck as the rock’s draw-back rate exceeds your damage + collection rate (or at least slows it to the point where further progress is not feasible).
As a result, the game is basically a puzzle about how to create a feedback loop that allows you to deal enough damage to complete the game without the game's feedback mechanism (compression, where stuff goes back onto the rock) exceeding your damage or without having to idle for exceedingly long periods of time to make progress.
Like most such games, each time you reset your progress, you gain some advantage – in this case, talent points, which let you figure out a synergistic build to enhance your ability to damage the stone/collect resources. This unlocks new abilities and synergies that are not otherwise available.
Like most games of this genre, you won't be able to succeed until you've reset it several times to level up your abilities; if you do level up the right ones, you can beat it at as low as 14 talent (and possibly less; I've beaten it at 14). The game does actually have an end-point – once you make the rock undergo 10 compression events, you gain the ability to put an end to things and win. Once you do that, you unlock a time trial mode, in which you are encouraged to beat the game as fast as possible with 20 unlockable talents.
It is still very much an idle game, even if there is a little puzzle attached, so if you aren't into that particular genre, this game isn't for you. If you do like it, it is a pretty nifty little way of making a game like this, and I managed to beat it in a day or so; it’s a significant improvement over most idle games in that it actually encourages you to think about what you’re doing beyond “when should I reset?”, and that’s a nice thing to see.
2.5