This was an interesting idea for a game and neat way to take the theme. Some things I wanna bring up though is the death sound of the gnomes is a lot. It is rather loud and in your face even on low volume and it goes on for a while. A part of me thinks its meant to make you feel bad for doing what you're doing, but even with that in mind, it doesn't end up making me feel bad in a moral sense as much as I feel bad because my ears are growing tired of the sound. I also don't know if it was intentional or not for the player to lock up in place when they walk over a gnome and remain rooted to the spot until the gnome dies. Jumping into them seemed to allow me to bypass this, so I mostly just hopped around to get a move on. Last thing I wanna mention is I sometimes took damage from the bucket pouring gnomes despite their water not being anywhere near me. It seemed to happen specifically around a screen transition when this would happen, so I would just take damage without really feeling like I could do anything about it.
Outside of all that though, I thought it controlled pretty nice, everything felt responsive, I kinda like the aesthetic of the game, the player looked cool and all the gnomes stood out well no matter the environment so I was always able to tell where they were, which is good. I ended up overthrowing the king before it literally rained on my parade and brought my temporary rule to an end. So, all in all, pretty decent job. Hope I haven't come across too harsh here, the sound just did end up getting to me in the end. Good work!