Few years ago vampire survivors somehow became hit, and it’s pretty much idle clicker with some bullet hell mechanics / progression
Better example is cookie clicker, it was also popular and you just click cookies :\
There is more games like these that aren’t mobile games to just produce cash, but actually being single-purchase or free clickers made for actual fun, do you think there should be more of them and if they’re good genre for players or maybe not? Btw i’m not talking about making clickers, just overall thoughs
I love clicker games!! I find them really fun.
But honestly, and going off on a little bit of a tangent here, I feel as though there should be more games for every genre. Any genre is a good genre, if you know what I mean. It’s all just personal preference.
I like the in browser clicker games though. I dont think I would buy one, but I loved cookie clicker, and all the other clicker flash titles! Its nice because there isnt as much as a time commitment i guess. Every game made by a huge corperation feels as though its a 200+ hour commitment, not including all the microtransactions, and those clicker games just let me play.
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That’s probably best pro of these steam clickers that aren’t mobile ones, they’re for you to play, not for you to grind and pay to win, making them way more comfortable to play
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I think there’s a big difference between clicker games that actually require you to continually click to progress, and idle games that basically play themselves, running in a background tab with the player maybe checking in once per day.
I can see the appeal of idle games. It feels good to have a passive income, even if that income is in meaningless game tokens.
I can’t see the appeal of active clicker games at all. Having to actually work for your meaningless game token income is for suckers.
I think idle/clicker games can absolutely work outside the typical mobile monetization model. The interesting part is the progression loop—watching something grow over time, unlocking upgrades, and gradually optimizing how resources are generated.
For me, the genre becomes much more enjoyable when there’s some meaningful strategy or experimentation involved rather than just clicking the same button repeatedly. Games like Cookie Clicker show how surprisingly deep that simple loop can become when the progression systems are designed well.
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Hell no to both. Personally I think they’re the worst types of games along with walking simulators and games that are basically just stories with barely any gameplay. There’s not enough substance to interest me.
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There was one idle clicker game I played on my phone once, and it really got me hooked. I can’t recall the game exactly now, but you were making a kind of survival bunker, digging down, and each layer you dug started doing a new thing! I got hooked because the stuff they came up with was genuinely clever and interesting, I just kept thinking “what will the next level do?”.
However, I still got bored with the whole mechanic, and discovered if I changed the date on my phone, it assumed all the previous bunkers were working for that long and gave me all the collected resources. Then returning the date kept all the resources. So I could generate as many resources as I wanted at any time. It still took ages to complete even with that hack.
Other than that one game, I agree with @weaselboy2 and would never play one again. There are so many other simple interesting games and puzzlers to fill those short times where you are waiting around and you’re bored.
Clicker/idle games are alright, however they don’t really require much skill or strategy. The fact that they’re a “FREE [MONEY/COOKIE/POINTS]” button in most of them makes them kinda simple; you can’t go bankrupt in them.
Idle games can be fun but definitely more of a waste of time than anything. “Number go up” can be really engaging and definitely tickles the parts of the brain in the right way. I think I’ve spent about $20 on different games over the years on them.
I also don’t think you can call vamp survivors an idle/clicker game as it has direction inputs and demands constant focus to avoid enemies and projectiles. The extent of the clicking comes from selecting items/loot. The meta progressions are incremental but I think the game play separates it from idle types.
Idles/clickers are essentially interactive UIs attached to a spreadsheet.
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Yeah, idlers are one of the least meaningful kind of games. The clue is really in the name - idle.
Equivalent of TikTok slop. Their appeal is based entirely on their ability to hijack your neurological reward systems
Idle games have a unique ability to not exhaust all of a player’s attention; so they can more easily focus on other elements, like gameplay in hybrid genres, or slapstick writing, or that they should get back to doing something else