Anyone into idle/incremental games?

[Misery]

And by that I mean the rather odd yet rapidly growing genre of games that seem to sort of… play themselves. A lot of time spent with these will be just sort of either letting them sit (active AFK, often running in the background as you do other things) or shutting them down and then coming back later, seeing progress upon loading it up (passive AFK).

I’d previously always sorta thought the idea was just downright silly, but recently I’ve been trying to sort of expand my horizons with my hobbies, and with gaming that means trying new genres. I decided to give this one a go, and to my surprise these are WAY more interesting than I thought.

Granted, it depends on which one you’re playing; some are VERY idle… typically these are the very early ones like Cookie Clicker (which, while often considered a classic, is downright archaic now). Others have periods of high activity. Others mix that up. In a good one, a lot of what you’re doing is making careful decisions… these games are best for those who enjoy optimizing the heck outta things, and for those who like management style gameplay. Typically, as you play one and progress, more and more game mechanics and ideas are unlocked over time, when you hit certain milestones. Which is a good thing; these get bloody complicated.

I’ve found that what you’re doing and how you’re doing it can vary wildly. The game I started with is called Idle Wizard (and is my current favorite). Your goal is to generate silly amounts of mana to reach milestones and unlock progressively more complicated mechanics and concepts and game modes… typical for the genre. But you do this by choosing a character class, and then trying to work with that class and what it can do to optimize… make bad decisions and you’ll seem to get “stuck”, with progress simply not going fast enough to hit the exponentially increasing milestones. So, figuring out how to make progress at any point is part of the challenge. What upgrades do you prioritize? What spells do you select to go in the limited spaces in your hot bar? Which ones do you set on auto-cast, and which ones do you let build up charges for manual casting? And when/why do you do that? When do you switch things up? When do you do a character “reset” and choose a different class to progress the main milestones? Among other things… much to my surprise there are moments where the game can be VERY active (and this has proven to be a trend with more “modern” idle games). There are classes that want a lot of activity for you, and others that are designed for AFK play, but any of them are going to require careful, tough decisions and puzzling out how to get things done.

Lately I’ve been recommending to people I know to give some of these a try if they haven’t already, particularly the more recent ones. Much to my surprise, many of them have already been playing this genre for quite a while… it’s gotten really popular recently, and now I see just why that is. I’ve been just loving it… I’m a big fan of games that focus on management and min-maxing, so this is right up my alley.

Really the only problem with it is that you want to make sure you’re avoiding certain specific ones that are stuffed with micro transactions… but I guess that’s like any other bloody genre these days and is fortunately very easy to avoid. Well, specifically avoiding the ones where the MTX is about gameplay enhancements that you NEED in order to progress… a GOOD one will have MTX that is only cosmetic things and whatnot, just meant to support the developer (since most such games are free). A good one will also not try to constantly shove them up your nose.

The ones I’ve been really into so far include:

Idle Wizard (I just mentioned that)
NGU Idle (doesn’t take itself seriously AT ALL. The dev has a great sense of humor and like all the ones I’ve been playing there’s a lot of depth).
Melvor Idle (a harsh learning curve as it tends to overwhelm you with stuff to do, and you need to make decisions about just which things you should be doing at any given time. Like the other two there is a combat system you’ll engage with sometimes… and this one has the most harsh death penalty)

There’s others I’ll try sooner or later but those three are what I’m focused on now.


And yes half of them do have “idle” in the name… a lot of these devs aren’t any better at naming things than I am.

These all so far have been on Steam… it’s best to stick to PC with these. There’s also ones on mobile but OF COURSE that’s where all the bad ones are.

Anyway mostly I’m rambling about these as I like to share my interests with others every now and then, particularly when I find something that I think is truly worth recommending.

 

[Raggamuffin]

I'd been intrigued by the thought of an AFK game, but I never actively went out of my way to research or get any.

The only AFK I liked doing was on Rollercoaster Tycoon. Build up your park. Then let it run overnight and come back to it and have huge amounts of money. Then demolish the park and build a super park.

Ed

 

[Shamar]

And by that I mean the rather odd yet rapidly growing genre of games that seem to sort of… play themselves. A lot of time spent with these will be just sort of either letting them sit (active AFK, often running in the background as you do other things) or shutting them down and then coming back later, seeing progress upon loading it up (passive AFK).

I’d previously always sorta thought the idea was just downright silly, but recently I’ve been trying to sort of expand my horizons with my hobbies, and with gaming that means trying new genres. I decided to give this one a go, and to my surprise these are WAY more interesting than I thought.

Granted, it depends on which one you’re playing; some are VERY idle… typically these are the very early ones like Cookie Clicker (which, while often considered a classic, is downright archaic now). Others have periods of high activity. Others mix that up. In a good one, a lot of what you’re doing is making careful decisions… these games are best for those who enjoy optimizing the heck outta things, and for those who like management style gameplay. Typically, as you play one and progress, more and more game mechanics and ideas are unlocked over time, when you hit certain milestones. Which is a good thing; these get bloody complicated.

I’ve found that what you’re doing and how you’re doing it can vary wildly. The game I started with is called Idle Wizard (and is my current favorite). Your goal is to generate silly amounts of mana to reach milestones and unlock progressively more complicated mechanics and concepts and game modes… typical for the genre. But you do this by choosing a character class, and then trying to work with that class and what it can do to optimize… make bad decisions and you’ll seem to get “stuck”, with progress simply not going fast enough to hit the exponentially increasing milestones. So, figuring out how to make progress at any point is part of the challenge. What upgrades do you prioritize? What spells do you select to go in the limited spaces in your hot bar? Which ones do you set on auto-cast, and which ones do you let build up charges for manual casting? And when/why do you do that? When do you switch things up? When do you do a character “reset” and choose a different class to progress the main milestones? Among other things… much to my surprise there are moments where the game can be VERY active (and this has proven to be a trend with more “modern” idle games). There are classes that want a lot of activity for you, and others that are designed for AFK play, but any of them are going to require careful, tough decisions and puzzling out how to get things done.

Lately I’ve been recommending to people I know to give some of these a try if they haven’t already, particularly the more recent ones. Much to my surprise, many of them have already been playing this genre for quite a while… it’s gotten really popular recently, and now I see just why that is. I’ve been just loving it… I’m a big fan of games that focus on management and min-maxing, so this is right up my alley.

Really the only problem with it is that you want to make sure you’re avoiding certain specific ones that are stuffed with micro transactions… but I guess that’s like any other bloody genre these days and is fortunately very easy to avoid. Well, specifically avoiding the ones where the MTX is about gameplay enhancements that you NEED in order to progress… a GOOD one will have MTX that is only cosmetic things and whatnot, just meant to support the developer (since most such games are free). A good one will also not try to constantly shove them up your nose.

The ones I’ve been really into so far include:

Idle Wizard (I just mentioned that)
NGU Idle (doesn’t take itself seriously AT ALL. The dev has a great sense of humor and like all the ones I’ve been playing there’s a lot of depth).
Melvor Idle (a harsh learning curve as it tends to overwhelm you with stuff to do, and you need to make decisions about just which things you should be doing at any given time. Like the other two there is a combat system you’ll engage with sometimes… and this one has the most harsh death penalty)

There’s others I’ll try sooner or later but those three are what I’m focused on now.


And yes half of them do have “idle” in the name… a lot of these devs aren’t any better at naming things than I am.

These all so far have been on Steam… it’s best to stick to PC with these. There’s also ones on mobile but OF COURSE that’s where all the bad ones are.

Anyway mostly I’m rambling about these as I like to share my interests with others every now and then, particularly when I find something that I think is truly worth recommending.

What I think I'm hearing you say, is you make a decision, tell the game what to do, then sit back, let it run, and hope it does what you expect? Sounds an awful lot like plain old coding to me.

 

[Suzette]

This sounds like fun to me. Kind of a pet with more interesting things happening than watching a sour dough starter grow. (Joke)

Are there any games like this for android? I would give it a go!

 

[Misery]

I'd been intrigued by the thought of an AFK game, but I never actively went out of my way to research or get any.

The only AFK I liked doing was on Rollercoaster Tycoon. Build up your park. Then let it run overnight and come back to it and have huge amounts of money. Then demolish the park and build a super park.

Ed

That’s actually an excellent way to put it. And accurate.

Build up your [whatever] and make careful decisions, optimize. Wait a bit. Do more stuff. Wait a bit. You can try to do lots in one day or do it slow over quite awhile, whatever.

And then once you hit a certain point where your progress seems to “lock up” (next exponential goal too high to be met in a sane amount of time) you… er… I can’t remember what it’s called by most players but I usually call it “ascension”. You restart your progress… except that some core stat/thing doesn’t reset and instead jumps up a bit. This core thingy usually affects *everything* to some degree and just how much it goes up depends on how much you accomplished during that last run. Getting the core thingy up is usually your *actual* main goal, and that’s what unlocks new things/mechanics. The core thingy has a different name in each game and sometimes there’s more than one. And individual runs can vary wildly in length depending on what you’re trying to do and your play style. One run might take 20 minutes. Another might take 3 days.

The real challenge for devs of course is to make sure that each run is interesting and has some real variation to it, while also considering the fact that some players want to be more active, and some want to be more passive. And of course making sure that the things you unlock are exciting and interesting.

What I think I'm hearing you say, is you make a decision, tell the game what to do, then sit back, let it run, and hope it does what you expect? Sounds an awful lot like plain old coding to me.

In my experience, development of any sort involves lots of yelling and then I hit the screen with something or threaten it with a shoe.

I haven’t done that with any of these. So, not QUITE like coding.

 

[Misery]

This sounds like fun to me. Kind of a pet with more interesting things happening than watching a sour dough starter grow. (Joke)

Are there any games like this for android? I would give it a go!

Oh I’m sure there’s plenty for Android… this really has become a big genre.

But I’ve no idea what they are. I only have iOS devices myself.

They’re not hard to find, the only trouble is that on mobile games have a tendency to be… predatory. This genre doesn’t escape that, so just be careful which one you try.

Really I wish mobile game devs would stop freaking doing that.