2014: Rise of the idle games (The Top 10 Idle Games (like Cookie Clicker) In My Opinion)

The Game Room
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So in case you haven’t seen it yet, there’s this thread, where I found out about the game Cookie Clicker and introduced many on here to it.
Two things then happened over the course of the next year:

  1. Many, many others saw how popular Cookie Clicker was and figured they’d try to capitalize on it by making their own idle games.
  2. I became seriously addicted to idle games.

In the last two months alone, I think I’ve tried over 30 different idle games.
Some were fun…some were not…some were strange…and some downright hilarious. Some were informative…and some were enlightening…and some were really imaginative and great ideas.
And so…I’m going to share with you all my thoughts on some of them that I’ve played for two-three days, and others that—like Cookie Clicker—I’ve been playing for weeks and can see myself playing for months.

I will also name off those that I wasn’t so fond of and, to put it more blunt, thought sucked. I will leave it to you to either avoid those ones or to try them anyway and make your own opinions of them.

So without further ado:

Idle Games I Thought Sucked (avoid at all costs)

Number - Yes, Number. That’s all there is to it. Just a number. Oh, look, you can make it go faster. Snore. Next.

Choppin’ Wood - This one held my attention for about a whole day. It’s not BAD, per se, it’s just not all that interesting either, in my opinion. Good for an hour or two, maybe…but for the long run? No.

Gold Miner- This was like a cross between an idle game and an RPG which, no thanks…if I wanted an RPG, I’d play an RPG. But if you’re into those or really like them, it may be one you’ll want to check out.

Idle Games That Amused…For About A Day Or Two (give them a try if you’re willing).

ZombyFactory- A pretty interesting idea…and of course: Zombies!
Not bad, pretty fun. Not the best out there, though (IMO)

CIVClicker - This one I could see people spending some time on, although I only spent two days on it. I liked it, but after you build everything up and do everything, there doesn’t seem to be much more point other than building up resources.

Kushify- Idle game where you sell…well, exactly what it says on the tin. Only the finest weed. Amusing for a day or so, but in the long run, there wasn’t much to it.

Giant Shaft- Business can be pleasure.
Idle Games That I Enjoyed A Lot And Played For A Long Time (definitely worth a look and at least a day’s play)

Clicking Bad - Yep, like Breaking Bad, only you’re the seller of it in this idle game.

And then there’s DrMeth, which I think is a LOT better than Clicking Bad. It’s funny, interesting, and made me laugh out loud a few times.
Kind of racy, black humor, though.

Derivative Clicker - A fun game where you start out with a certain amount of things that make you money, and the more levels you buy that are UNDER IT, the more it adds to the thing above it every so often.

And this one, Cosmic Clicks, was surprisingly fun. I found myself buying stuff and continuing to play just to see the story unfold.

But, it’s time for what you all (the 2 or 3 of you who are actually reading this and giving a shit, probably :p) came in to this thread for, the TOP TEN list.
This is the TOP TEN Idle Games (in my opinion) that I’ve played in the last month.

Idle Games That I Thought Were The Best Of The Best (YOU MUST try these out at least once):
10. GoomyClicker- This one surprised me a LOT. I wasn’t expecting to like it at first. After all, how good could a game fully be if the dev hasn’t even uploaded images for everything yet?
But don’t let it fool you, this idle game is a sleeper. It was a lot of fun and surprised me at how much it had.
Particularly of note is the feature below the Goomy that you click on…there’s a line there that will keep you informed on how far your Goomy’s would stretch if laid end to end…and it has a LOT of examples that slowly go for farther and farther distances.
9. Candy Box 1 and 2- This one pre-dates even Cookie Clicker. A lot of fun.
8. Conspiracy Clicker- VERY, VERY INGENIOUS idea for an idle game, I found. It’s one of the more “smart/intelligent” ones you’ll find.
7. Anti-Idle - A game with many, many features and so many achievements that it would take pages to list them all.
6. The Monolith - THIS game was great fun…maybe the MOST FUN of every game in this thread. I laughed a LOT at this game, it was very interesting, it kept my attention for hours. Seriously, give this one a try if you try ANY on here.
5. A Dark Room.
You start in a dark room with a fireplace. What you do from there is totally up to you…but the world is bigger than you think. Believe me.
4. Dripstat - What was sleep again? Holy shit, this game is ADDICTIVE. Almost as much as Cookie Clicker. And a huge part of the reasons it is is twofold:

  1. IT HAS A LEADERBOARD. So that you can rise up over the ranks of the many people playing in hopes of getting number one.

  2. THE. LEADERBOARD. RESETS. every so often…every time a new level is reached, the scores and your game is reset…with NEW features added.
    What was sleep again?
    I’ve played this one the MOST of them all…almost constantly daily.

  3. Wall Destroyer- At first glance, I was not very impressed with this one. It looked/looks like a poor man’s Cookie Clicker clone. Looks were certainly deceiving, however…as it’s turned into a game that is not only ABOUT AS FUN as Cookie Clicker, but seems to have a SHITLOAD of content in it. So much that I still am unlocking new things even after a week of playing. It’s VERY impressive, so don’t let the crude, lackluster graphics fool you. It’s one of the greatest ones I’ve played. Even after you destroy the wall, you think it’s over? Oh, it’s just the BEGINNING, my friend.
    You might even notice it’s hosted on the same site that Cookie Clicker is on… Made by the same genius? Who knows!

  4. Cookie Clicker (duh)…if you haven’t already tried it.

And that leaves me with number one. This last game is the one that has impressed me THE MOST and the one–out of many idle games I’ve played over the last few months–that I would recommend the most.
Seriously, try this one for a day or two, you WILL NOT BE SORRY. It is, without a doubt, the most impressive, amazing, intriguing, strangely captivating idle game I’ve ever played.

  1. Sandcastle Builder– I have SO many things to say about this game and I don’t know where to begin. Put short and simple: It’s downright amazing.
    Going more in-depth, there’s many things about this game I want to point out.
    For one, IT’S LONG. For two, IT IS MUCH, MUCH slower than other idle games. MUCH. But the build up and wait is worth it.
    The game is about two lovers on a beach, that is artwork done by the same guy who draws XKCD (the popular cartoon of his entitled “Time” starts the story off), so if you’re a fan of XKCD, even MORE reason to try this game out.
    Anyway, this game is so long, it’s even divided into time periods.
    You start out in the Debut/What Period, as said by the side of the drawing. This is in the Pre-Expansion ERA, and the whole thing is in the SANDCASTLE EON. Yeah, The story is that long to have different periods, eras and eons in.
    The two lovers–Megan and Cueball by name–are sitting on the beach and eventually start to build sandcastles.
    And thus starts a huge, long, actually endearing story about these two characters and the things they build in the sand.
    Don’t play this one if you like/want instant gratification, because it moves SLOW. Each drawing that comes up (called “Newpix”) changes every 30 minutes (as timed by the small clock at the top…which looks like an hour clock, but is really only thirty minutes).
    Once that clock goes around, a new “newpix” comes up and the “ONG” happens.
    The number newpix you’re on is located on the side. I’m on newpix 60 right now, and so far the story is fantastic. It’s just REALLY, really (strangly) intriguing, I find…and I’ve READ that the whole story has 3089 newpix! I can’t wait to see what happens next.
    Again, this game moves slow…the characters take their time in doing things. They don’t even get around to making anything until about newpix 25 or so (which would be 10 hours into playing it), but they do do other stuff that is worth noting, and have many subtle changes throughout every drawing.

In sum up: TRY THIS ONE OUT. It’s blown me away.

Anyway, that’s all. Hope you enjoy some of these games as I have and liked the reviews I gave 'em.

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Thanks for posting this. It’s a great index.

Have you looked into these sorts of games on mobile? Making It Rain is pretty good.

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So, just how far does A Dark Room go? I’ve just started producing steel, and there are no obvious targets to build towards… but once I have steel armor, I’m probably going to start exploring further.

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Start exploring the outside world more…somewhere in it is something very interesting, you’ll find. It may be fairly far from your village, though.

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Nice games, I played Cookie Clicker myself.
I also played a lot of Make It Rain.

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I used to play Cookie Clicker, but lost interest in it after I tried the beta. After starting over completely fresh in the beta (hard reset, no achievements or heavenly chips), I surpassed my previous non-beta total within a week, and by a week and a half had gotten every achievement possible (a few are disabled in the beta). Which means that, if the beta is what ends up getting implemented, nothing you do before that implementation matters at all.

And a lot of these games, I’ve found, can’t seem to decide whether they’re idle games or active games. A lot of them seem to be basically normal active games, except that there’s one spot somewhere or another where you need to let it run overnight. Others have features that you absolutely must check in every few hours or get devastating consequences, so you can’t run it overnight.

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My understanding is that the beta has a bug where heavenly cookies give you a far greater boost than they’re supposed to. Orteil hasn’t fixed it because he’s working on something else, according to the reddit.

I’ve been playing Clicker Heroes lately.

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It’s not done by the same guy who does XKCD… it just uses the art from one of his projects. Comic # 1190 to be exact. From what I can tell, Randal Monroe has nothing to do with that site.

If you want to see the story in its entirety, a number of sites have collected all the frames, including this one.

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Me too. I mocked a friend when he showed it to me, and now I’ve got it running at work non stop. Sigh.

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There is a bug in A Dark Room.

If you switch languages, the timers for Gather Wood and Check Traps will be reset.

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Read the title as “indie” games.

Left disappointed.

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Apparently he’s set up a proxy that creates your personal clicker-game out of a text file with your custom names and numbers. I can’t tell yet if Wall Destroyer was made this way.

But yes, he’s a pretty clever dude. If it’s stable enough, we can maybe run a game around a “fighting ignorance” theme.

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Is this thread just for sharing these games or are opinions allowed?

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Well, the OP is a list of opinions on which are good and which aren’t so I say go for it.

I played Giant Shaft for a while but once I “beat” it the first time around, I had no desire to do it again with the extra add-ons.

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Sure, opinions are allowed, although from what I’ve seen of your posts in the Cookie Clicker one, are they more opinions about my choices and what ones you think are good and/or bad ones? …Or is it more of your opinion that all idle games suck and you can’t believe there are people who play them? : p

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I tried it for a couple of days, but what do you have to do to start getting monolith shards? Once I reach Modern Age, nothing new seems to happen.

It appears to be made from an “Idle Game Construction Kit” of some sort.

Is there anything that happens when you break down a wall, other than a much bigger wall showing up? I knocked down two walls, but stopped when I calculated needing something like 21 straight 24-hour days in order to get enough damage to break down the third one.

There’s a bug in it; the number of bricks you need for things appears to be rounded down instead of up. After I got my first Necromancer, it said that I needed 2 bricks for my next one, but I couldn’t get one even though I had two bricks. The number of bricks needed appears to rise by 10% each time you get a Necromancer, but the number is rounded down (or at least rounded off) to 2, whereas you need 2.2 (i.e. 3, since there are no partial bricks).

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Reset. This is a schtick of idle clicker games where progressing so far in a game nets you some number of items that buff your next run. If your only interest is in ‘completing’ the game, then you’re done and you can do something else. But if you want to try to get there faster or whatever then the shards will help you move through the stages more quickly.

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Reported.

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Jfc, it’s so damn slow even with an autoclicker. I’ve been playing irregularly since this thread and I’m only on newpix 54.

If anyone else is interested, the only bit of advice I have is skip the sand tools for a long time. Castles are the main currency and it takes forfreakingever to get your sand rate up to an appreciable amount to make it worth it. Also, molpy down when you get to newpix 3 as that unlocks the time travel boost and you might as well get it before you have built up a lot of stuff.

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I got to the Final Wall in Wall Destroyer - and then discovered that the Reset Button resets all damage to zero…

No real harm done; it didn’t reset my achievements or upgrades, and I managed to redestroy the first four walls in 10 hours. At my current rate, the Final Wall will take another 250 hours to destroy…and then what? Does the Boss Brick that you get do something?