Idleon

Idleon has to be the most intense spread sheet manager I've ever played. I've got so many chickens in the oven you'd think I was the head chef of a banquet hall. I've got so many irons in the fire that most of them have melted together. There's a lot to do in this surprisingly well-crafted web of relatively simple mechanics that all tie together into a singular, long and grindy, but nonetheless interesting experience.

It took me a while to give this game a shot. I have a general interest in idle games and occasionally check what steam has for them. This is always near the top. But I can't remember exactly why I didn't pick it up or what prejudices I held against it. Well, that's all in the past now; I did pick it up and I rather like it.

Idle games are a hard sell for a lot of people. "Why do I want to play a game that plays itself?" Well, I feel like that's hard to answer because there are a lot of angles to look at it with, but for this article, I want to put it like this: The fun part of any game is making interesting decisions at important junctions of gameplay and idle games just remove the "gameplay" part of that and let you focus on the important decisions. After all, the gameplay of many games is boring and repetitive, and sometimes I might wish "couldn't someone just do this for me?" Well, no genre is this more true for than the RPG, which is what Idleon bases itself on.

As far as RPG's go, it's in many ways very watered down. This isn't some high fantasy world, or a place with all that much lore, nor are there massive talent trees which force you to carefully plan out your builds. Well, you might want to be somewhat careful, but it's much simpler.

To explain, let's rewind back to the beginning.

(Well, this isn't how it actually looks at the start, but my account was pretty advanced when I took the screenshot.)

You start out in a small town that sits atop Blunder Hills. Though not so much a town as a very opaque game hub with a shop, a quest giver, a forge and anvil, and a few other NPCs who become unlocked later. The quest giver tells you to go out and hunt some spores. Sheesh, we're starting out so low that even a slime is too strong? Anyway, you do it, the quest giver has you make some boxing gloves, kill more things, and then the main quest is basically just explore. While out, you meet more NPC's and they'll tell you to collect X of this and Y of that or kill these or so and so. 

Before long, the quests start to involve waiting, and a lot of it. But your account level grows with your "player". And when your account level is high enough, you unlock a new "player". Why are they called "players?" If they are the player, who am I? I must be the watcher, the manager. 

You manage a team of players making their way through the game. They each have their own inventory, but a common chest. Wood chopped by one player can be used to make a bow made by another, which maybe will make an extra one so another player can use it.

What starts out as a game where you control the players' every move organically zooms out as you stop micromanaging them so badly. The first major decision you have to make about a player is its main class which determines how it's going to fight and with what weapon, and in what skills it will specialize. That would be mining, chopping, catching, fishing, and brewing, just counting the abilities contained in world 2, which is where you decide their subclass.

World 1 is all about familiarizing yourself with the game, clearing portal requirements (kill X of Y), completing quests, mining and crafting better gear, and beating the big bad boss. Collecting lots of wood and ore, killing monsters, and completing quests all feels like an upwards hill, but these soon become trivial. World 2 introduces some global bufs through an alchemy mini idle game and obals, which are collectables which give stats, but it's still largely the same. 

World 3 starts to get into projects. You've got trapping, which everyone can do but only hunters specialize in, and it takes time. A single trap can be set for 8 or 20 hours (real time). Then there's construction, where you can build town buildings which give buffs or sell upgrades, and the "death note" where the number of kills of each monster is counted and if it goes beyond certain thresholds, you get "multikill" bonuses (at 100%, each kill is worth 2). These take time, planning, and investment. 

World 4 introduces cooking, breeding, and the lab which are even longer-term projects, but give oodles of passive stat bonuses. At this point, managers should basically be running full teams and maybe keeping track of that many workers is getting difficult, so the lab and kitchen are like daycare where workers without a specific purpose can be dropped off and gain EXP in those tasks which, at the end of the day, equates back to more passive bonuses.

Finally, world 5 is more of world 4. You've got "divinities" where you set a worker down to pray and when they've collected enough, you can negotiate with a god for really good passive bonuses. And there's expeditions where your workers can manage pirate captains who go out and collect loot which--as you've probably guessed--translates to more passive bonuses.

Well before this point in the game, I'm maintaining detailed spreadsheets on the activities of each of my employees and their purpose.

It's necessary to manage them efficiently because our goals involve many steps and many hands. I'm also tracking a lot of data about my workers on idleontoolbox.com, often for information that to get in game, I'd have to walk my workers, map by map, to town in order to read and walk them all the way back. This site contacts the server and pulls all the information I need.

The community around IdleOn is massive and thee precision to which they have figured out how the game works is impressive. They've even broken down the formulae for determining the speed and efficiency of various skills (https://idleon.wiki/wiki/Formulae). Importantly for me, they've found ways of calculating the "drop rate", which is needed to know how long to leave a worker idle. If a loot will drop at a 1 in 20000 chance, it turns out that after long enough, you are guaranteed at least one drop and the longer you wait, the more drops are guaranteed. So there's no guesswork here.

That said, some of the waits are depressingly long, upwards of 300 hours, and I just don't think I have the patience.

The emotion IdleOn most makes me feel is that of anticipation. Afk workers become treasure chests that grow as they are left to wander about the map on their own. Should I open it now? What might be inside? Or should I wait? They are fruits of temptation that ripen more and more, becoming sweeter and sweeter, readying themselves for when I bite in.

But for the most part, since I know how long I have to wait for specific drops, I know the exact ripeness I'm looking for. And even knowing, this is still a source of anticipation.

My mage needs new armor, but I don't have the materials. 300 dementia bars... At 40 ore to one bar, I'll need 300*40 = 12000 ore. So I ask my barbarian to start mining. Mining is undignified to a mage. Plus they don't have extra EXP or efficiency bonuses for it like barbarians do. Well, I wanted to keep his mining skill below my Journeyman's, but this is important. He'll have to catch up later. Right now he's leveling up to 150 so he can start the void walker questline. Plus, my journeyman is a lousy miner and won't get me the ore as fast as I want it. Which is now. Though I guess that means I'm not working on the barbarian's goals... those will just have to be put on hold, too.

I have many goals and they will all require some amount of dedication so they conflict with each other. But for all of them, I anticipate the next power level, new ability, new mechanics, and quests, etc.. IdleOn rewards the delay of gratification by rigidly sticking to plans on how to spend resources or just gather them in the first place. Let units AFK for just the right amount of time and get the guaranteed loot I need, or cave into temptation and risk messing up the drop probabilities.

Fast forward a bit and my account level is high enough and I've unlocked my eight player. It's going to be a bit of a hassle getting them into the team. I've got all the main 6 subclasses going, so this new character will have to be a duplicate. Plus, getting them up to speed with the operation is going to take time. I need kill counts on specific maps and a newbie just isn't going to get the kills per hour I need. Reluctantly, I accept them, it's just the eighth player doesn't serve the same role when they enter than did the first when they entered. I have a good fisher, trapper, alchemist, catcher, chopper, builder, chef, breader, etc.. What can a newbie do?

My early employees had room to mess around and experiment. They discovered many innovations that made my corporation very powerful and they are individually very good at what they do because they've been doing it the longest. Latecomers are underlings who have to do menial tasks while their superiors get first dibs on new armor. 

To be honest, I find eight to many and I think I have even still one to unlock, but that's just how the game is. Perhaps in a future update, the extra players' purpose will be clarified.

IdleOn is a fun game. It's charming and has the kind of uniqueness that tends to only come from solo-developed games. It's also not entirely balanced, has lots of jank, and too much time-wasting, but it's also just kind of fascinating. I keep wanting to play, but there's really not much to do. But there's also always something to do. Can I get my damage up just a little? What if I moved some equipement around tried this constellation, check my vials... oh that bubble can be way higher... construction speed... oh, when was the last time I looked at the construction table? Ah, no one's making cogs, but I have open slots! Speaking of which, is there a food from the kitchen which increases construction speed? Oh, I forgot I left zicc in the lab over night.

If that paragraph sounds like a bit much... it's hard to explain, that's just how the game feels. You have to leave your players out in the field to farm you kills and resources, but you also always want them running kind of everywhere all at once.

There's so much more I wanted to talk about, like the sometimes very creative quest design, time candies, poorly-implemented, very pay2win monetization, the kind of quirky yet endearing creator and their livestreams, but this entry is already super long. Maybe I'll write about this game again sometime. Maybe not.