As someone inclined to chronicle everything around, I took a note of playing a handful of idle mining games for Android for two weeks straight, right before losing my nerve and going for Factorio. Here are the games that I tried out:
- Sandship
- ReFactory
- Idle Planet Miner
- Exominer
- Idle Kingdom Clicker (early access)
- Tinker Island
Anyways, this is what the recommendation algorithm spat out. I’m not particularly impressed by any of the games on the list, so this is rather a rant of how and why they are bad in my opinion. Except for the first two, maybe, but I honestly don’t even remember if they are truly idle: that is, keep mining and crafting on when an app is closed. Nonetheless, they fit in the general “mining” theme I was looking for.
Sandship and ReFactory are both unique in their own way…
… despite being blatant clones of Factorio; the only reason why they left a bad impression is because my humble mobile device overheated, death-lagged, and crashed a couple of times while I was playing them. Aside that, not much to rant about. I would even recommend to try them out to a fellow Factorio fan with a high-end mobile device.
But these abovementioned three games don’t have to consider the speed of player progression. They leave the progression pace up to a player. The latter may lay back and watch their base when they want some time off, and if they want higher production volumes, impressive decorations, intense PvE battles, whatever, they just hustle, increase they click-per-second rate, and get the desired reward.
In idle games, if resources come in too slow compared to the upgrade prices, and there is nothing to do in-between the upgrades, a player gets bored. If the progression is too fast, a player hits the ceiling of development and loses interest as well.
The whole point of idle games is, in my view, to provide a comforting feeling that progression keeps going on even when the game is not running. They don’t push a player to grind. Progression is a matter of time. This is what a player like myself would expect anyway.
The moment I started to like Idle Planet Miner…
… I discovered that the game resets the Copper counter to a number below 1,000 every time I reopen the game. There are more important things to be upset about in life, but I was, let’s say, mildly shocked. It deeply hurt my player feelings.
The thing is, Copper is the most common resource in the game. What is the problem? Integer overflow? Abusive strategies of focusing on Copper mining to turn it into Copper Bars and Wires or just selling it raw? But a game that does not manage abusive strategies is a poorly designed one!
Besides, IPM has already implemented a rather dirty technique: unless you reopen the game every two hours, production stops. It’s not even four hours. It’s not six, it’s not a full day. Such an aggressive reminder is almost disrespectful towards players. It goes without saying that the whole definition of “idle” is ruined if a player has to check a game, like, 12 times a day to enjoy the “idleness”.
The motivation of the game producers is perfectly understandable though: you gotta watch that ad and buy another batch of some premium content. Develop a habit through repetition. Develop attachment. Thank you very much, I’m not into abusive relationships, really.
There is a cool tech tree in this mobile idle mining game though. It really stitches the game together, giving a player ever more difficult long-term goals. Each new technology requires scarcer resources and/or larger quantities of them.
Although there are plenty of technologies in the tree, a player is discouraged from researching all of it, which is a smart design move. On the contrary, the player is encouraged to start the game from scratch with a persistent bonus that will apply to all subsequent runs. “Sell the galaxy” they call it. As soon as the total value of player’s assets reaches a certain amount, they are offered to exchange it for something in the likes of “+15% global mining speed” and start from a clean slate. The research progress will reset, as well as all the planet upgrades and the planet availability itself. And it’s the same old tune again, only the numbers switch more rapidly.
Being able to Colonize (basically, upgrade) planets and assign Managers to them (giving a flat production boost) adds a little touch of customization. On top of that, there are Missions that yield random rare loot and Asteroids, all of which, taken together, make the game pretty diverse. But taking away the excess Copper? And obligatory check-ins every two hours? Seriously?
Another game on this list, Tinker Island, has easily dealt with the issues this one did not manage to tackle. The solution is: limited resource storage space.
Exominer is so similar to Idle Planet Miner I don’t know which is the clone of which…
…except that Exominer loses to IPM in every regard.
First off, it cloned the mine upgrade system. In IPM, one can upgrade a planet's production speed, and each planet provides a mix of up to three different resources. The resources are delivered to a homebase with shuttles that have, in turn, speed and capacity parameters, both upgradeable. These three upgradeable parameters are identical in both games.
The difference is, Exominer’s mines hold only one resource. The price of the 1st level mine upgrade is $1. The price of the 2nd level amounts to thousands of $’s, which implies serious imbalance, and the said imbalance immediately results from the longer times that players are allowed to keep producing with the app closed. If I remember it right, 6 idle hours are allowed. Not too much, heh?
On top of that, the research tree is extremely poor. And no little fun features like Managers, Missions, random resource bonuses from Asteroids, etc.
I would say that Idle Kingdom Clicker is the best of what I’ve played from this list…
… but it still Early Access. It implies that only a few basic Buildings, Resources, Production chains in general, Research items, and other features have been implemented. Other than that, it is simple, satisfying, and balanced.
No game comes without an onboarding tutorial that treats players like five-year olds, and I’ve got to admit that it’s a good thing.
10h maximum idle period.
The game economy allows Building upgrades every few minutes, which is very satisfying, and players can boost production manually, tapping the screen. Every next upgrade is expensive just enough to slightly increase the waiting time until the next upgrade. E.g., it takes mere seconds for a Lumbermill lvl 1 to collect enough resources to afford leveling to lvl 2. As for leveling from lvl 89 to 90, the waiting time is about half an hour, but at that point one would normally have a bunch of low-level Buildings that need attention, so there is always something to do.
On the other hand, the numbers go pretty high in this game, and I saw a bunch of number suffixes that I’d never seen before. Beside the familiar K and M, I noticed, for instance, af. Must be quite a big number with more zeroes that my screen can comfortably display.
You want to hinder the players’ progression – ask Tinker Island how.
I’ve put lots of time into the part one back in the old days. Apparently, part two got only worse: try it for the first two minutes and you’ll know what I mean.
A bunch of shipwreck survivors (maybe not a shipwreck since they don’t really remember) end up on a mysterious island full of mystery with mysterious footprints all over the place. Smells like a survival/detective, except that it’s none.
Each survivor has a set of 4 attributes: Construction, Exploration, Battle, Foraging – which show how goods they are in the respective activity. During their stay, they need to set up a camp; the Buildings either provide flat attribute bonuses, serve as production facilities, unlock other Buildings, or increase max Storage.
So this is it: you can’t exceed the Storage limit, you must revisit they game to spend the resources and/or increase the storage space. As if it wasn’t enough, there is a 6h max idle period.
Every activity takes real time, except for combat – the latter is so mediocre that I’m not going to touch upon it in the least.
And, every activity must have at least one survivor assigned to it. The default survivors are not particularly brilliant but there’s always an overpowered one for $99.9 in the store for your choosing. More can be unlocked as the story moves on but they don’t make much difference.
There is a ton of meaningless dialogue windows. I got sick every time stumbling upon them. I’m curious to know how much time, in percent, players spend clicking through them as fast as they can because, as I said, they are meaningless. They don’t reward players with weighty bonuses, do not influence the story, do not seriously punish players for “wrong” choices, do not contain useful lore of the world.
Finally, a great and original feature: an built-in puzzle minigame. It has no relation to the storyline, but beating certain levels grants new survivors or rare resources. While the resource counters are ticking, the minigame is there for players who are obsessed with achievements, want the change of pace and scenery, or wait for a survivor to return from an exploration mission.
Tinker Island 2 might have dealt with some of the issues (Combat, specifically) but it might as well made some of them worse: I only lasted for about 5 minutes into the game because – meaningless dialogues!
This is it! Now that I’ve outlined the features I reckon bad and the ones that either counterweight the bad or are good on their own, I know for sure what a perfect idle mining game should look like!
- players' progression is hindered by limiting their resource storage space and enabling the reset of progress in exchange for production boosts & other bonuses in future runs;
- built-in minigame(s) to keep players engaged while resources accumulate;
- plenty of little features that spice up the main game loop: Missions, Quests, Attendance Rewards, Seasonal Events, etc. - as many as possible.
- "who doesn't love huge research trees?"
- procedurally generated maps after each reset to encourage replays
After all, having swallowed a considerate portion of disappointment, I lost the nerve and went for Factorio. It had appeared on my Steam feed more that once, “similar to other games I played”, namely: Oxygen Not Included. But I wanted to keep Factorio as a sweet reward for an IRL achievement or wait until more quiet times so that I could fully enjoy it. This is why I postponed installing it for so long. Besides, I knew that it was a sticky game, a rabbit hole, a vortex, a time sink. Something less engaging would have been a safer choice.