Slowdown Simplicity: Discover Idles

Key Takeaways

• Idle games require minimal input, allowing players to progress by simply keeping the game running in the background.
• Popular idle games like Cookie Clicker offer upgrades to automate tasks, creating exponential growth in gameplay.
• Critics argue that idle games lack quality and originality, relying on simple loops and microtransactions for revenue.

Some games focus on pure escapism, immersing you in a virtual world every bit as compelling as the real one. Others are more content to live in the background.

What Are Idle Games?

Idle games are a niche video game genre . As the name suggests, idle games require less direct input than a typical first-person shooter or precision platformer. They let you make progress simply by having the game running, potentially alongside other games, videos, or—whisper it quietly—work.

Idle games often start by being anything but idle, though, requiring constant interaction. This is often in the form of simple, repetitive mouse clicking which is about as fun as it sounds. However, a typical idle game soon ramps up the fun. By offering upgrades to automate the manual work, idle games scale your abilities in tandem with your objective.

Which Idle Games Can I Play?

There are many idle games you can play for free, and most of them are available in your web browser. Many have mobile apps and a few are available on consoles.

Cookie Clicker

Cookie Clicker is possibly the best-known example of an idle game. You start playing by clicking a huge cookie to bake individual cookies. Upgrades become available to automatically click the cookie, multiply various effects, and generally scale up the action until you’re producing millions, billions, and even larger quantities of cookies.

Cookie Clicker features many achievements and even a few mini-games which make it a lot deeper than its initial appearance suggests.

Play: Web ,Android (Free, ad-supported),Steam ($4.99)

A Dark Room

A Dark Room features plenty of interactivity, but it also involves a fair bit of waiting around, so it just about qualifies as an idle game. Presenting a very basic interface, it’s reminiscent of the text adventure games that originated in the 1970s. After some time, the game takes a turn, introducing a different type of gameplay. And there are plenty of twists in the plot, too.

Play: Web (Free),iOS ($1.99),Android ($1.39),Switch ($6.99)

Clicker Heroes

Clicker Heroes is an idle game styled to look like an RPG. Foes appear for your band of adventurers to combat automatically, earning you gold. Meanwhile, you can buy new members for your squad, upgrade their abilities, and purchase special powers. While it initially seems quite unique, the parallels with other idle games like Cookie Clicker soon become apparent.

Play: Web ,Steam ,Android ,iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

Universal Paperclips

A more recent take on the genre, Universal Paperclips still looks like something from the earliest days of the internet. It begins a bit like an economic simulation, tasking the player to create paperclips with the click of a button and choose the right price to sell them at.

Before long, paperclip numbers will explode and you’ll be managing an AI to take over production while you busy yourself with stock market investments.

Play: Web (Free),iOS ($1.99),Android ($2.49)

Why Are Idle Games So Addictive?

By their nature, idle games can run continuously in the background, but this means they are competing with foreground tasks for your attention. You may need to just switch to them very briefly to make meaningful advances, so the temptation to do so is strong. Pretty soon, you might find you are switching more and more frequently,sabotaging your productivity .

Idle games are often also incremental games, so progress occurs—or, at least, appears to occur—exponentially. This aspect helps to create a sense of achievement beyond a typical linear scale, so playing an idle game can be more rewarding.

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Are Idle Games Ruining the Industry?

Idle games have possibly reached the peak of their popularity, representing a significant fad that has since waned. But their influence has been far and wide, and many share business models and techniques with other mobile and web-based games.

Some idle games offer microtransactions to speed up their gameplay. These incentives can be tricky to resist when a small amount of money has a great impact on progress. Idle games are very often free to play, so need to find alternative revenue sources, including in-game advertising.

Meanwhile, many people dismiss idle games as simple, low-quality efforts. They often have a very simple gameplay loop, replicated from game to game, and invest little in graphics, sound, or narrative. Even the developer of Cookie Clicker, orteil, has referred to their idle game as a “non-game.”

There has been concern about the energy use of idle games which players often leave running 24/7. Even if it’s just creating virtual cookies,your computer may be using more energy than you realize .