Summary

  • The best idle games offer unique mechanics for engaging gameplay.
  • The genre offers varied settings like fantasy kingdoms, communist dictatorships, and D&D adventures.
  • Creative titles like SPACEPLAN & Universal Paperclips provide unique narratives and challenges.

Starting on mobile, the idle game genre has exploded, with plenty of worthwhile additions to the formula. Although simplistic, the best games out there bring something new to the table with reset perks, unique mechanics, and satisfying "numbers go up" gameplay. Idle games are not for everyone, but for fans of the genre, any new classics are a great find while most can be predictable and samey. Whether the setting is tyrannical rule, fantasy adventure, futuristic satire, or surreal bakery, there is an idle game for everyone out there.

Leaf Blower Revolution and Spaceplan
10 Best Incremental Games for Mobile

Idle and incremental games usually allow players to make progress without interaction. Here are the best ones available on mobile devices.

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These examples are some of the best idle games of all time for fans to get their teeth stuck into while waiting for the next classic to appear.

1 Realm Grinder

Kingdom Management

Realm Grinder Gameplay
  • Release: June 15, 2017
  • Platforms: PC, Browser, Mobile
  • Developer: Divine Games

Starting with a plot of land and a farm, Realm Grinder gives players the chance to become the rulers of their own kingdoms. Fans will build up the infrastructure and purchase upgrades until they have the chance to claim faction coins that will let them align themselves with different fantasy races.

With choices that will determine whether the player is good or evil, trophies that will each provide slow bonuses and a myriad of artifacts that have to be excavated to be discovered, Realm Grinder hides plenty of content behind its initially small facade. Building a kingdom that matches the special abilities given by player allegiance and trying to complete a collection of fossils and antiques, there is plenty here for players to lose themselves in.

2 Adventure Communist

Satirical Dictatorship

screenshot of mobile game adventure communist

  • Release: August 10, 2016
  • Platforms: PC, iOS, Android
  • Developer: Hyper Hippo Games

Starting again in a wide open field with a farm but in a very different setting, Adventure Communist tasks fans of the idle game genre with running a struggling country in the grips of a laughable cartoony communist dictatorship. First using potatoes as currency, the player will then start to claim land, build a military force, develop medicine, and build up their country.

However, every step forward requires sacrificing some of the previous upgrades, making for a satirical counterpoint to Adventure Capitalist that also makes for a very unique idle game. To build a military, players will have to give up land and medicine, managing every resource carefully to progress in a sustainable way.

3 Idle Champions Of The Forgotten Realms

Dungeons & Dragons Clickathon

Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms gameplay
  • Release: March 25, 2020
  • Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, iOS, Android
  • Developer: Codename Entertainment Inc.

Bringing the idle game loop to the world of D&D, Idle Champions Of The Forgotten Realms sees players choosing a squad of fighters with a range of races, classes, and backgrounds and pitting them against waves of classic enemies. Each adventure has additional challenges that can be added, and as players progress they can collect better gear for each champion and even unlock others from popular online D&D games like Dimension 20 and Critical Role.

Unlike a lot of other idle games, Idle Champions gives fans a story to progress through with dialogue and can be challenging with boss fights and extra complications. Certainly one of the most inventive idle games available, and a must-play for TTRPG fans.

4 Universal Paperclips

Web Based Worker Bots

The logo for Universal Paperclips
  • Release: October 9, 2017
  • Platforms: PC, iOS, Android
  • Developer: Frank Lantz

Universal Paperclips is perhaps the most creative version of the idle game social commentary and has been wildly successful while staying accessible to as many players as want to partake in the paperclip adventure. Starting with a paperclip factory, clipping wire into paperclips, and deciding on the price, players can quickly automate the process and start marketing the paperclips to the people of Earth.

Saints Row IV/Conker's Bad Fur Day/South Park: The Fractured but Whole
6 Video Games With Immature But Funny Humor

Comedy in video games can either make or break the story, but these games did a great job at using immature humor.

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The game came from a thought experiment and attempts to put players in the position of a learning AI and can be completed by converting all matter in the universe into paper clips. At that point, players can travel to a neighboring universe, or create a simulation within their own universe to start over making more paperclips. While endless, the ideas the game presents and the narrative spiral are clear.

Classic Bakery

Cookie Clicker
  • Release: August 8, 2013
  • Platforms: PC, Android
  • Developer: DashNet

A humble bakery that starts with clicking on a giant cookie with a few grandmas working hard at their ovens becomes a demonic cult obsessed with sweet treats and milk. Cookie Clicker is most gamers' first interaction with the idle game genre where they will be spoiled by the huge amount of content.

Floating golden cookies can be clicked for bonuses, and a whole slew of upgrades are available on each run as well as a divine tree of glowing upgrades after every universe reset. Cookie Clicker is the gold standard for every single clicker game to aspire to: almost every upgradable source of cookies has a minigame to increase production and the game has infinite playability.

6 Kittens Game

Civilization Management

Kittens Game
  • Release: 2014
  • Platforms: PC
  • Developer: bloodrizer

Kittens Game is a text-based idle that can be a little more involved than some of the other idles on this list. Players must lead a society of kittens through the seasons, ensuring they have enough catnip to not die out. The cats start to build fields to harvest, then huts to live in, and begin working the land as farmers, miners, loggers, and scientists.

Establishing ideological tenets and progressing to miraculous leaps in science are all part of the joy of discovery that comes with Kittens Game. While players will have to keep an eye on the game, it still functions as a cutesy and basic idle clicker with enough bells and whistles to set it apart from the flock.

7 SPACEPLAN

Potato Fuelled Sci-Fi

SPACEPLAN
  • Release: May 3, 2017
  • Platforms: Android, iOS, PC
  • Developer: Jake Hollands

Far and away the most exciting, curious, and impressive idle game, SPACEPLAN throws the player into a vast and lonely solar system where they float in orbit around a desolate planet where their only source of power is the small bursts of solar energy through damaged solar panels and small potato batteries that fans will set up as they harvest power and data from the planet below.

The simulated view given by the ship to the player makes the scale of the adventure obvious. By the end of the story, the planet will be covered in probes made of potatoes with the sky filled with orbiting stations that will beam power back to the unfortunate explorer. With a sense of humor, constant subversion of expectation, and a story that begs for a sequel, SPACEPLAN is well worth any fan's time.

Monopoly GO: How to Get Houses and Hotels
8 Best Mobile Games Like Monopoly GO

Here are some of the best alternatives to the fan-favorite mobile board game, Monopoly GO.

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