Idle Games

A couple years ago, there was an absolute craze for a game called cookie clicker. I heard about it at one point and checked it out. It was immensely boring. Click the cookie, get more cookies, make buildings to acquire more auto clicking. A version of it can still be played here. I was so confused on why people were playing the hell out of this game.

It was vaguely reminiscent of old tycoon games of which I had played a lot of when I was younger, Sim Coaster, Zoo Tycoon, Roller coaster Tycoon 2, Restaurant Empire, etc. In fact it was my favorite genre of game. So being presented with this stripped down version of what I saw as the same experience didn’t really appeal to me. I think it just wasn’t the right time to explore this genre.

Several years later, I got my first smartphone, probably in early 2016 and was actually playing around with all the apps on offer. The strategy game pool was a bunch of games that looked like Clash of Clans and FarmVille, none of which were appealing to me, but I played them anyway. It was significantly more enjoyable than I thought it would be, sure they were Skinner Boxes, but they were satisfying. I was enjoying them because the amount of time I had to play games had significantly shrunk or was occurring at moments when I didn’t have the ability to really setup and play bigger games. I still had a couple problems though, mostly the lack of moment to moment gameplay. I would harvest my crops or start training my units, but short of that, there wasn’t a way for me to keep playing.

It was around this time I checked back on cookie clicker, a game that had long since fallen out of the craze it once held. To my surprise the game provided exactly what I was looking for a casual tycoon like game structure with the key difference being there was no lose state. I could play at my leisure and get that feeling of progress without having to stress and with a very small time commitment. One of the most positive aspects of this game was that there was always something to to, I could always click the cookie.

Then the game started throwing me for a loop, I was encountering boosts, skill trees, and other interactive strategic elements that were changing the way I was thinking about the game. Multiple currencies are introduced that cannot be exchanged or traded for, leading to a lack of centralized strategy and offering a number of interesting choices at any given moment.

Of course games like this are now a dime a dozen, providing a bunch of unique experiences and interactions to keep the Idle game genre evolving. A bunch of these games follow the same or a simmilar structure, linear growth and a central currency, this makes mathing out an optimal strategy for these games a very simple task, upgrading in a pattern or ratio as the game goes on with no deviation. I figured I would highlight a few that do not follow this trend as they provide a bunch of interesting choices and different play experiences.

Egg Inc. (IOS/Android):

Egg Inc. is a really interesting take on the idle genre for a number of reasons, the biggest being its straying away from linear growth. Clicking doesn’t produce a central resource, instead it produces chickens which then lay eggs, the resource the player uses during the game to buy upgrades for their farm. This not only expands the potential for more interesting upgrades (Upgrades for both chicken production & Egg production) but it also gives clicking a more needed feel. If I click this will set me up well long term, rather than just a momentary reward.

Another really interesting thing Egg Inc. does is its monetization strategy. In the game, the premium currency is golden eggs, which can be acquired from completing achievements, watching adds, frequent quick time events, and direct purchase. The part that I think is incredibly interesting about this is actually the direct purchase option. While the game provides an array of direct purchase options at a static value, the game also offers a premium currency purchase with a static price, but a increasing value, depending on how much of the game you have played and how many times you have purchased it previously. What this manages to do is reward longtime players within their monetization, something that is often very tricky to do in a free to play game.

Adventure Communist (IOS/Android/Steam):

Adventure Communist is what you get when you have a larger company back an Idle play. Rather than a single developer, this game is made by a studio and published by Kongregate (At least on IOS). What you get is a surprisingly slick Idle experience with no frills. Its simple and straightforward. It starts to deviate from its predecessor, Adventure Capitalist when we look at the resources of the game. This game has a whopping 8 in game resources, 5 of which are siloed into their own tab, but the remaining 3 are used as a way of binding the game together. Over the course of the game players will unlock different industries that have a linear progression, however deciding how and which to allocate your resources on at any given time is a real choice that players are presented with. Players acquire science by completing tasks, and expanding their industries, they can then dump science back into any industry to give it permanent boosts. Cards are acquired by completing the same tasks and are required in addition to science. Labor (Comrades) are needed to build any building and all resources can be converted into labor over the course of the game. This means balancing all 5 industries & the given tasks you have at a time. This in addition to a similar feature, avoiding linear growth makes this game a really interesting idle experience.

The monetization system unfortunately drives a lot of choices in this game, leading to potential soft locking progression and predatory loot box microtransactions, but because I knew these things going into the game I was able to avoid them pretty easily.

Cookie Clicker (Web):

No Idle game even comes close to cookie clicker in my opinion. The game offers a bunch of depth, interaction, progression, and currencies that all make the play experience far more interesting than it actually appears at first glance. Over the coarse of the game the player will encounter skill trees, farming mini games, spell casting, religion, the apocalypse, and strategic choices for each of these. All of them compounding and interacting with each other in order to really provide an experience that evolves as you play it and constantly makes you reframe how you are looking at the idle experience.

A couple games that I’m not really gonna go into detail but are probably worth checking out:

A Dark Room: For its evolving gameplay that spans far beyond a typical idle/tycoon game
Space

SPACEPLAN: For interesting storytelling and a lot of nuanced interactions/riffs on the traditional Idle experience.