Idle Games - Not just clickers

CriticalGaming

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I wanted to talk about something that not a lot of people are likely going to be super interested in, but it's something I've been thinking about for a while. Working in an office can be exceptionally boring, and work computers aren't exactly the best things to play games on (usually because they are trash computers, nevermind the whole "not allowed" thing). But there are browser based games and low resource games that you can play on just about everything and anything, that help move the hours along.

Idle games otherwise known by clicker games have an interesting reputation amonst gamers. Some dismiss them out right as game and feel like they aren't worth even a glance. Others get heavily invested into them (like me), while others might be interested but the reputation gained from the first group keeps them away. So with that I want to talk about a few idle games that I think are worthy of a look even if you just casually checked them out.

So first off, what is an Idle Game? Well as the name suggest it's a game that basically plays itself and grants the user progress even while that user is not directly interaction with the game, they progress idly. But the reason why they are also sometimes called Clicker games is in the fact that in order to get your idle production started, you have to click stuff, often a lot of stuff, before the game will take over for you. Generally all these games follow a theme of upgrades that increase the rate of your progress, buildings or employees or some sort of buildable unit that automates various levels of production, and finally a prestige mechanic which is typically a big reset button that drops your progress back to zero but grants you some boon of power that makes progressing further and faster much much easier.

Those are the foundations in which these games are typically based on. Now onto the games, starting with the most famous clicker game and arguably the clicker that started it all.

COOKIE CLICKER -

The game starts with a screen and a big cookie. At the top you see the number of cookies you can and how many cookies you gain per second, these begin at zero. So what do you do? Clicker the cookir of course. Clicking the cookie grants you a cookie to your cookie bank. Click again, get another cookie now you have two, and now another column of things is siloutted on the right side of the screen. The first shadow has the number 15 next to it. Ok so you click the cookie 13 more times and now that shadow lights up. It's a finger, you click it to buy the finger. Now a little finger floats next to the cookie and you counter now says you are making 0.1 cookies per second or CPS. A new item is blacked out under the finger, but it's 100 cookies, and you can buy more fingers the next one is only 21 cookies now, so you save up and buy another finger now you are getting 0.2 CPS and a new bar is available at the top of the screen. Upgrades, the first will double the power of your fingers AND your personal click.

It's a very simple concept, click the cookie, use cookies to buy buildings and upgrades to make more cookies. It's a video game equivalance of when you used to spam 1+1 on the calculators at school to see how high you could get the number before the teacher called on you or class ended. Basically it boils down to making the big number get bigger.

The thing is though, what starts as a very simple premise quickly evolves into a much more complex system. Between judging on whether to buy another building you already own, or save for the next more powerful building, or maybe an upgrade. Then you have the mini games within the games. Where certain building have mini games like a full blown working stock market where you invest cookies for long term returns. Or the wizard towers that can cast cookie spells, but they might backfire and fuck you up for a little while.

The you prestige and buy a galaxy worth of upgrades that do so many things to help you out it's impossible to count.

Cookie Clicker is one of the originaters of these idle/clicker games and it's no surprise that it is one of the best examples of what these games can really offer. What's even better is that the game is free and has no microtransactions to "help" progress. It is what it is and the developer makes money on people from Patreon. Though you can also buy the game from steam for like $4, but only if you don't want to play it in a browser and prefer and independant client.
 

CriticalGaming

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CLICKER HEROES -

Again you start with a deceptively simple game. There are monsters that you click on to deal damage and defeat. Defeating them rewards gold, with that gold you buy and upgrades a very large progression of heroes. The first hero increases the damage you deal with each click, while every other hero applies a static DPS to the monsters. As you level these heroes you hit check points which allow you to buy an upgrade for that hero, these upgrades can do a number of things such as, double the DPS of that hero, increase the damage of ALL heroes, increase the gold you find per monster, unlock a special active ability such as gaining gold for every click even if you don't kill the monster on that click. All of these upgrades are useful and in some way they'll all increase the damage you deal allowing you to reach higher and higher stages.

At level 100, the bosses will start to drop Hero Souls. You bank these hero souls until you prestige, then you can use them to purchase and upgrade artifacts that grant a wide variety of bonuses for your next run. The challenge is that every 5 stages there is a boss that requires the player to kill it within a certain time limit. Once you hit a boss you can't kill, reset and upgrade and do it again, getting further and further each time.

Until you reach level 300. This is where a new currency is added Outsider souls. These work to level up a small number of Outsiders which have VERY powerful bonuses. However getting these requirers Ascension. Ascension acts like a super prestige in which you gain outsider souls but loose all hero souls and anicents previously purchased. Effectively starting with nothing as if you began a new game....well except for the power granted by Outsiders which is broken.

Thus these two cycles repeat until you stop playing the game. Some of the top players have spend years reaching zones above 2 million. There are some other small aspects of the game like clans where you ban together to fight a super boss once a day to earn bonus hero souls, Mercenaries that you send on irl time based missions to bring you back resources (usually rubies which is the games microtransaction currency used to buy auto clickers and time skips), and clickables that appear randomly on screen sometimes and clicking them grants a big pot of gold and sometimes a ruby.

The game is a math game more than any other idle game I've seen. Where there are online calculators for the most effecient leveling of your anicents and outsiders and the meta is to try and be as optimal as possible for the fastest speed to Ascension.

Sadly this game is no longer under development and while it's complete it's a shame that they've moved on to other projects that have failed terribly for them.
 

BrawlMan

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Not my style of games. I know not every clicker is the same, but even the unique ones have nothing to offer for me. You'd be better off giving me a Game & Watch. Glad you're having fun though.
 

Bedinsis

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I once played AdVenture Capitalist, with a save I had running for over a year. What started out as somewhat exciting turned into a slog after a while and I eventually only still had it running and kept visiting because I had gotten so far already, and it was more appointment than anything I actually enjoyed.

Once miniclip had an update that removed my save I used that as an exit point from the game, and I have since never looked back.
 
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CriticalGaming

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NGU IDLE -

This is by far the most complex idle game I have ever played and as a result it's hard to describe. NGU (Number go up) is a game that splits itself into so many different aspects that it's hard to describe them all.

However it does start sort of simply. You have a pool of energy and magic, each one fills up rather slowly until it hits your pool's given cap. You first apply this resource to training, which increases your attack and defense. You then can fight bosses, each boss is exactly 10X stronger than the one before it. But as you train you unlock more powerful trainings which give bigger increases per tick.

As you beat bosses you unlock a couple of different things. Namely Adventure mode and Augments. Augments are basically like training except they cost gold on top of needing energy allocated to them. Gold comes from adventure mode. As you beat bosses you'll unlock adventuring zones where you can kill monsters for gold and gear, gear can be equiped to make you stronger in adventure mode only, but it allows you to fight harder and harder adventure zones.

As you progress like this you'll unlock more things like the Time Machine which can give you gold passively assuming you have the energy to invest. And in Adventure mode you unlock Titans, Titans are the big bosses of this mode and killing them unlocks yet another new feature to be used in the game like Yggdrasill the world tree where you can grow fruit to buff yourself. Or a Card game where you can cast cards for perminant buffs to various things in the game.

It gets very complicated very fast. Plus prestiging will improve your energy pools as well as give you a passive power bonus to everything. Oh and then there is EXP which is gained all over the place and you spend EXP to increase the speed of your resources, or increase the max pool, and loads and loads of other things.


Then beating the final zones and bosses in normal unlocks Hard, where you do it again, then you unlock Sadistic and do it again. Each difficulty has new bosses, new titans, new gear, new zones, new everything.

It's the deepest most complex idle game I've ever played and it's the only one that has a definitive ending. Beating Sadistic takes about two years give or take your investment, but once that's done, there is nothing else and you have beaten the game. Every other idle game ends when you give up playing, this is the only one I've seen that actually can be "completed".
 

Xprimentyl

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I got into one of these types of games a year or two ago, and the epiphany hit me whilst sitting on the toilet: "what the hell am I doing, and why the hell am I doing it?"

Idle games are not, IMHO, "games." Remove whatever textures they drape over the framework, and you've got a bunch of timers that require you touch the screen ever "x" seconds, minutes, hours, etc. Yes, I understand one could easily reduce ANY game to a collection of inputs that dictate what happens next, but idle games are really condescending, like, they really don't respect the players' intelligence, time, and God knows, their wallets.
 
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CriticalGaming

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I got into one of these types of games a year or two ago, and the epiphany hit me whilst sitting on the toilet: "what the hell am I doing, and why the hell am I doing it?"

Idle games are not, IMHO, "games." Remove whatever textures they drape over the framework, and you've got a bunch of timers that require you touch the screen ever "x" seconds, minutes, hours, etc. Yes, I understand one could easily reduce ANY game to a collection of inputs that dictate what happens next, but idle games are really condescending, like, they really don't respect the players' intelligence, time, and God knows, their wallets.
I should clarify that none of the games I describe here require any money from you. In fact none of them even ask for any money from you ever. Even if you do spend, the benefit is minimal and is more to support the dev than anything else.
 

Bedinsis

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Sidenote: is Universal Paperclips an idle game? I thought that one was genuinely good.
 

Xprimentyl

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I should clarify that none of the games I describe here require any money from you. In fact none of them even ask for any money from you ever. Even if you do spend, the benefit is minimal and is more to support the dev than anything else.
Well, that's fortunate. All the one's I've experienced have "pay to win" options almost from the jump. Those I've looked into typically ease you into the loop of "progression," and once you're invested, the progression becomes more and more arduous and time consuming, and the opportunity to pay your way through the gate is presented.

Idle games are for those who easily fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy. They let you progress far enough that when you're faced with an ostensible paywall, you look back and rationalize that "I've come this far, and it's only $10"... several times, over the course of months.
 
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CriticalGaming

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Well, that's fortunate. All the one's I've experienced have "pay to win" options almost from the jump. Those I've looked into typically ease you into the loop of "progression," and once you're invested, the progression becomes more and more arduous and time consuming, and the opportunity to pay your way through the gate is presented.

Idle games are for those who easily fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy. They let you progress far enough that when you're faced with an ostensible paywall, you look back and rationalize that "I've come this far, and it's only $10"... several times, over the course of months.
Those are the shit ones. There are a lot of shit ones, but I like the genre enough that i've scooped the gold off the top of the shit heap.
 
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Xprimentyl

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Those are the shit ones. There are a lot of shit ones, but I like the genre enough that i've scooped the gold off the top of the shit heap.
I guess I've only seen the shit ones then. I've never come across such a game that invites you to wait for free.
 

CriticalGaming

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I guess I've only seen the shit ones then. I've never come across such a game that invites you to wait for free.
NGU Idle is unique in that not only does it invite you to wait, it forces you to wait as no amount of money allows you to skip progress.
 

Xprimentyl

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NGU Idle is unique in that not only does it invite you to wait, it forces you to wait as no amount of money allows you to skip progress.
For some odd reason, that actually sounds worse. I wouldn't dump any amount of money into an idle game, but one that is purposefully designed for you to wait without the incentive to pay through waiting periods seems unnecessarily punishing. And that's not a defense of "pay to win" mechanics, just a defense of my free time. I play games to "do" something; playing a game that actively has me do nothing save for check in every few minutes/hours seems like a waste of my time, not an offensive pastime, just not a particularly motivating one.

Anyway, carry on with the discussion. I've nothing else to add for as little as I have already.
 

CriticalGaming

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For some odd reason, that actually sounds worse. I wouldn't dump any amount of money into an idle game, but one that is purposefully designed for you to wait without the incentive to pay through waiting periods seems unnecessarily punishing. And that's not a defense of "pay to win" mechanics, just a defense of my free time. I play games to "do" something; playing a game that actively has me do nothing save for check in every few minutes/hours seems like a waste of my time, not an offensive pastime, just not a particularly motivating one.

Anyway, carry on with the discussion. I've nothing else to add for as little as I have already.
You see to me though, that's one of the best parts of the design on these games. They are idle, meaning you aren't meant to sit there and watch or engage with them all the time.

The ability to set them up before work, only to come back 8 hours later after work and see what progress has finished as well as what i can set up overnight is what addicts me to them. It's something I can look forward to, something to plan, a little bit each day and then go about doing something else. They are games I can play and progress in, without feeling bad about wasting time as I get to be productive while also "playing" these games.

All in all I think the good idle games are the ones that warrent a bit of thought infrequently (say every morning your shitting) then coming back to see the result of what you set in motion hours or even days prior.
 

Xprimentyl

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You see to me though, that's one of the best parts of the design on these games. They are idle, meaning you aren't meant to sit there and watch or engage with them all the time.

The ability to set them up before work, only to come back 8 hours later after work and see what progress has finished as well as what i can set up overnight is what addicts me to them. It's something I can look forward to, something to plan, a little bit each day and then go about doing something else. They are games I can play and progress in, without feeling bad about wasting time as I get to be productive while also "playing" these games.

All in all I think the good idle games are the ones that warrent a bit of thought infrequently (say every morning your shitting) then coming back to see the result of what you set in motion hours or even days prior.
Again, to each their own. Between my job and my chores, I've got enough to check on throughout the day; a "game" that demands equal attention to be "played" does nothing for me. But apparently, there's an audience for such things, and I'm happy for said audience; not going to shit on anyone's parade if clicking a button every 4 hours gets them off.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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I just remember the one with the lollipops that turns into a dungeon crawler. Good luck finding it though
 

meiam

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Very, very unfair comparison, but I couldn't help but think of:


Honestly though, don't have much of an interest in these, they obviously fill in a niche. I'm guessing they tap into the feeling of progression without sucking much time for the user.
 
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wings012

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I played Candy Box and Cookie Clicker like most people I guess. I've played some random mobile ones, there was a silly one called 10 billion wives or some nonsense.

I feel like some of the gacha games I play are basically idle games. I log on, I click on things, leave the game on autobattling and then fuck off. Azur Lane being a big example, I'm just here to collect big tiddy anthromorphic representations of warships. I'm generally just navigating menus and leaving autobattles going than actually... playing it though so it feels very similar to an idle game.

Anyway there's a lot of all these super routine games where you basically do nothing but accumulate stuff and watch numbers go up - be it an idle game, gacha game, microtransaction city builder or what have you.... I kinda see them as some kind of digital bonsai. We're not really looking to spend effort and play an actual game with these, it's just something you can see gradually grow when you're on the shitter. When you're on a train. The random 10 minutes of work procrastination. Just something to check on and dirdle about using random pockets of free time and maybe get a bit of a dopamine from seeing the numbers go up, the waifus accumulate or whatever.

Anyway I think the fact that these clicker games are so addictive just shows that when you boil it down, many games are kinda just about the illusion of gains and progress. Watching the numbers go up is just pleasant even if it means bugger all. Like how you use the weapons don't really fundamentally change a whole lot past a certain point, but me and many people enjoy grinding our asses off in Monster Hunter. Past a certain amount of fights, the actual fighting of the monster is just repetition and we're just grinding for loot. And in the end the reward is seeing those big numbers.
 
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Drathnoxis

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I played Forager through a while back and had some fun with it, but ultimately left it feeling unfulfilled.


The same with Vampire Survivors.

And I only reached level 33 on Progress Quest, which is pretty much the quintessential Idle game.

And that's mostly my experience with the genre.
 
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