Today, I'm gonna be talking about idle/incremental games.
It's hard to say when exactly I first played an idle game. I could argue that it was over a decade ago, playing Runescape (which requires a lot of waiting around while improving skills). I could also argue that it was Interactive Buddy- if you know the game, you'd know that it's not really an idle game, but my brother once wrote a script in it to make explosions every frame, which technically meant you could idly gain money (but in reality, crashed the game then gave us NaN money)
I do remember my first time playing a real incremental game though. I was with my cousin and brother, staying in a hotel in Victoria. We were there for a vacation, but at the time were still settling in to our rooms, and not out exploring the city yet. My brother somehow found Cookie Clicker, and introduced the two of us to it. I played for a little while, but honestly, I found it a bit dull. The problem is, at the time, there was very little actual gameplay (we played a very early version). All you could really do was click and purchase upgrades. I was somehow more entertained watching them play than I was playing it myself.
My brother absolutely fell in love with the game. For the next while, it was a great source of pride for him- he had a very good score (again- he started very early on, so he had a head start), and on multiple occasions, he'd unlocked every currently-released achievement apart from the one that requires cheating (just so he could prove that it was all legitimate). I still wasn't a fan of the game, even with the new content- I've always been more a fan of sandbox games, as I've mentioned before.
That said, I have found some idle games more interesting lately. It's a benefit to their popularity- although most games are just clones of existing ones, some idle games actually innovate quite a bit, and introduce concepts from other game genres. There are none that I play with as much dedication as my brother used to with Cookie Clicker- honestly, none last for more than a few hours- but they do make for a good pastime when paired with music or podcasts. The main problem is, no matter how many interesting features an idle game has, the whole point of the game is to be repetitive, and that just isn't for me.
Anyways, that's gonna be it for today- hopefully you enjoyed this post!
