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Games So Great, You’ll Love Not Playing Them - Our 5 Favorite Idle Games

117K View2022-07-29
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Written by @Kef
Some readers are going to take one look at that headline and think we’re crazy. We get it. Idle games—also known as clicker games, tap games, or incremental games—are a strange beast. It’s a game that you don’t play? What’s the point?
The point, friends, is progress. Delicious, dopamine-producing progress. Idle games are about setting long-term goals to hit big numbers and knowing that even when the app is closed, you’re still making slow and steady progress toward those goals.
On top of that, many idle games also implement a layer of RPG-style strategizing and party management. It’s not enough to just let the game mindlessly run itself; you need to actively think about what upgrades you’re building toward, how you’re spending your limited resources, and which characters are getting the top-end equipment to lead the charge in battle—even if those battles play out without your input.
At this point, it’s extremely common for even the least idle mobile games to have some element of idle games, whether it’s being able to set your crew to auto-battle a level you’ve completed before or sending agents on missions to earn you rewards when you’re logged off. But the true focused idle game experience is still being refined and perfected, and it still feels real good when a developer understands the gameplay loop and pulls it off.
Whether you already know the joy of idle games or are trying to find out what all the fuss is about for yourself, here are our choices for five of our favorites in this lazy-yet-rewarding genre.
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As an extremely popular blending of gacha and idle games, AFK Arena is a natural first pick for our list—not to mention a natural target of scorn for a lot of mobile gamers who hate both these styles. There’s a reason this title is so highly downloaded, though, and it’s not just the great name.
AFK Arena employs a pleasantly cartoony art style that suggests exactly the kind of light and fluffy experience players might expect from a title that openly advertises that you don’t need to be at the controls to play it. But that lightheartedness hides a near-endless well of complexity. It has over seventy characters to unlock, with more being added regularly, and those unlockable characters have strengths and weaknesses that can work to your advantage if you build your team wisely. There’s a rock-paper-scissors-style system for determining which types of heroes can most easily conquer which other types, and you also get buffs for putting enough characters of a certain type together.
On top that already meaty battle system, you’ll need to juggle different classes of heroes, multiple methods of leveling and powering up your characters, and an almost unfathomably high upper limit to how much power you can feed into your preferred champion. AFK Arena has a lengthy PvE campaign mode, a highly competitive PvP mode, and multiple other game modes to keep you busy and grant specific rewards. You can fool yourself into thinking you’re not “actually” playing the game, but in truth, a dedicated AFK Arena player can spend a ton of time each day working on their next goal and planning out the best path to get there.
And most importantly for any gacha game, AFK Arena is extremely friendly for free-to-play players. Only want to spend a little bit? Grab a premium path or monthly subscription and enjoy the benefits. Don’t want to spend anything at all? Don’t sweat it! As long as you complete your daily and weekly quests and check in for the AFK rewards regularly, you’ll be able to progress at a reasonable pace. It’s a well-rounded experience that has earned its place at the top of the idle game pack.
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Almost a Hero is a colorful RPG that fits more into the “clicker” (or “tapper,” as it were) side of the idle game genre. What this means in mechanical terms is that rather than having zero input during battles, you can contribute some damage against enemies by tapping. Don’t worry, though; you can purchase an autotap upgrade to avoid that annoyance.
What really sets Almost a Hero apart from the dozens of other fantasy-themed RPG idle games is its delightfully irreverent setting and characters. As the title suggests, the brave knights and sorceresses you’re recruiting on this quest aren’t exactly the best of the best. In fact, the game openly tells you that your teammates are a bunch of zeroes, and your goal is to turn them into, you guessed it, almost heroes.
The cast of seventeen recruits you can gather in Almost a Hero is full of personality, and each teammate also has their own skill tree, gear to equip and upgrade, and multiple viable builds to discover. The game has a passionate fan base and an almost absurdly deep endgame that pushes said fans to constantly theorycraft the latest and greatest methods of overcoming devious challenges from the developers.
Even if you’re skeptical about most idle games, you should give this one a shot. Just don’t blame us if you end up hooked.
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And now for something completely different. Electronic Arts released The Simpsons: Tapped Out all the way back in 2013, and it is still active and being updated to this day, almost a decade later. Very few mobile games of any genre, much less idle games, have that kind of staying power. So what’s the secret?
Simple: This licensed game is legitimately a dream for fans.
Tapped Out is basically a SimCity-style city builder, except that the city you’re building is the legendary cartoon sitcom town of Springfield. As you place familiar buildings—from the Simpson house to Springfield Elementary to Moe’s Tavern—you’ll also unlock familiar characters—from Bart to Mr. Burns to Barney Gumble. You can give these characters tasks that take anywhere from ten seconds to twelve hours to complete, and once they’ve finished, you’ll earn some experience points and currency that you can put toward continuing to expand the town.
It’s a simple enough concept that any longtime viewer of The Simpsons TV show, even one who never touches video games, can enjoy it. And that’s great, because the game is also full of wonderful fan service. It has cameos from obscure characters, funny self-aware dialogue, callbacks to fan-favorite episodes, and so much more.
If there’s anything worth complaining about in The Simpsons: Tapped Out, it’s the limited time events that the game regularly runs. These are often balanced toward either needing to spend premium currency or needing to set an alarm clock to make sure you’re logging in efficiently enough to hit the numbers needed to get all the rewards—neither of which are ways we particularly enjoy playing our games. Luckily, there’s plenty of, ahem, Evergreen Terrace content to keep you busy outside of those events. Just teach yourself not to fret, and you’re golden.
If you’ve ever enjoyed The Simpsons during its incredible thirty-plus-year run on TV, The Simpsons: Tapped Out is worth giving a shot. If you can easily recite dialogue from dozens of episodes from the first ten seasons, then you need this game like Lisa needs braces.
Tapped Out is not only not the sole licensed game on this list, it’s also, amazingly, not the strangest one. That award goes to the incredible, bizarre Run Godzilla, Toho’s latest expansion of the giant lizard we all know and love.
Contrary to the city-crushing, terror-inducing Godzilla of the movies, Run Godzilla imagines a world where civilizations worship and raise kaiju. And once those kaiju are all big and grown, they do what comes naturally: racing against other kaiju that were raised by competing tribes.
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Yes, as the title implies, Run Godzilla is a Godzilla racing game. And as its inclusion on this list implies, it’s a Godzilla racing game where you don’t even get to control the Godzilla during the race. Your job is to manage the people who are worshiping the kaiju, raise its stats appropriately, and, when the time comes, pass its genes on to the next generation so your tribe can continue building a giant monster racing dynasty.
In practice, this plays out as choosing which dance your townsfolk perform, which in turn affects the weather, which in turn affects Godzilla’s growth. Sunny weather races his stamina, rain boosts his toughness, wind increases his speed, and a little bit of thunder will make him hit harder. You’ll also need to set up a factory to produce resources, summon in more citizens to replace those who die or leave, and feed apples to the citizens to keep them happy. And as for the races themselves? Well, all you can do is cheer your beautiful big boy on and hope he crosses the finish line first.
Aside from the wacky concept, Run Godzilla also features an appealing, unique visual style. It’s low-res, but not to the degree of being pixel art. It almost reminded us of how old PlayStation Portable games used to look—and yes, we mean that as a compliment. It was wise of Toho to go with a more abstracted look for such an out-there game idea, rather than trying for a hyper-realistic art style.
On the downside, Run Godzilla has a lot of the more annoying free-to-play game trappings, including an overreliance on pushing players to watch “optional” ads and tempting players to spend real money to unlock specific kaiju variants, such as Mothra or Ghidorah. Locking our main monster Rodan behind a paywall? Not cool, Toho. Not cool at all.
Nevertheless, Run Godzilla is a surprisingly great little distraction, and it isn’t likely to take up as much time or mental energy as some of the other more complex idle games on this list.
Picking up the torch of games like Almost a Hero and AFK Arena, Vahn’s Quest launched just this past week. It features an appealing comic book visual style that’s boosted by comic book-style cutscenes. The story is light but fun, and the various characters you fight with and against are all beautifully designed.
What’s especially impressive, though, is that even for a game that’s just launched, Vahn’s Quest has a shocking amount of depth to it already. There are a ton of different modes and lots of content in the game, including over thirty different heroes to collect using the obligatory gacha, a super-deep gear crafting system, skill trees, and a deliciously lengthy upgrade path for each individual character.
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It’s hard to say after less than a week of play how Vahn’s Quest will stack up compared to games on this list that have been out for years. We still don’t know exactly what the endgame is like, for example, and while the microtransactions seem relatively easy to ignore thus far, that could change later in the game.
But whatever concerns linger, Vahn’s Quest made a strong first impression on us. If developer Super Planet sticks the landing, this will easily keep its spot on our list of idle games that are absolutely worth checking out, even if you’re skeptical about them.
And that’s our list! Five great games that you can download and start not playing right from TapTap today! What do you think? Any favorite idle games of yours that we didn’t cover? Or do you still find the whole concept of idle games baffling? Share your thoughts in the comments, and we’ll do our best to respond!
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cheddar
cheddar
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17

My favorite part of this list:

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2022-07-29

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Tester
Tester
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9

lo

2022-07-29

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Pipoca
Pipoca
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10

What about summoner's greed? It's also an incredible game

2022-07-30

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Kef
Kef
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4

Ooooh I really need to play that

2022-07-30

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LusciousNeko
LusciousNeko
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6

Idleon is a pretty good idle game too. It mixes idle and active gameplay

2022-07-29

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Kef
Kef
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5

I've been meaning to try Idleon. I've heard very good things!

2022-07-30

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