The Idle Game Phenomenon
My favorite gaming genre lately has been the growing phenomenon of idle, or incremental games. One of the most famous is Cookie Clicker, a browser game where you steadily click, garnering cookie resources, until you build up enough cookies to buy things like grandmas who bake cookies for you automatically. The game is meant to stay open in the background all day, every day, and has no real end to it. You could play Cookie Clicker forever. It has the same addictive qualities as those terrible Zynga Facebook games, which I may or may not have been mildly addicted to for…um…a while.
What I love about these games is that they’re instantly and constantly fulfilling. I can build up enough resources in a short period of time to buy the next level of whatever, and to gain resources even quicker. It also involves an amount of actual thinking, but not too much thinking, of course. I have to plan out a minor strategy to get the most out of my resources, implement the strategy, and then go back to mindlessly browsing Reddit.
The amount of strategizing some people put into incremental games is honestly staggering, and quite frankly, impressive. There is usually a pretty decently sized community for the major incremental games that discuss strategy, goals, achievements, and Easter eggs. People have built browser plugins and scripts that modify the games to display pertinent information that may change your strategy. It’s honestly mind-boggling and really, really cool.
The concept of incremental games sounds terribly boring, but it’s neat how it fulfills a sector of gaming that hasn’t really existed yet: games that don’t take much focus, that can be played while you’re doing something else. To be fair, they still suck up a large amount of time, but spread out over little chunks of time. It’s hard to spend an entire hour playing only Cookie Clicker, while it’s easy to spend that amount of time playing pretty much any other game.
Have I hooked you yet or are you just confused? Here’s a list with brief descriptions of some of my favorite popular incremental games. Try them out at your own risk.
Civ Clicker: Basically Sid Meyer’s Civ for dummies, like me. You build a civilization, assign jobs, attack cities, and try to keep your citizens happy. There are a lot of elements to balance, and it’s easy to throw everything out of whack.
A Dark Room: It’s weird to say that a minimalist text-based game could have a dark, eerie atmosphere, but this one manages it. I’d say this is the most artistic of the incremental games I’ve played, and probably the most rewarding. It’s also one of the only games in the genre with an actual conclusion.
Candy Box: Another classic incremental game, this one’s just pure silliness and happiness. You eat candy to gain HP and to buy things like awesome chocolate swords, then go fight. It takes a weirdly long time to build up to the point where you can actually successfully not die in a dungeon or castle, and it’s delightful fun all the way through.
