IDLE GAMES 

My favorite thing in clicker games is when the visual starts out simple, but gets more and more outlandishly covered in things happening. Cookie clicker does it really well with the sheer amount of cookies falling from the sky and the pointers

i love cookie clicker for all the actual content in the game; every upgrade has flavor text, the pixel art is gorgeous, and seeing what the next achievement will look like is fun

the ones you played are pretty much the "classic boring" kind, stuff like antimatter dimensions and kittens game (first ones to come to mind) are a lot more complex and fun. (saying this as a recommendation, not as a critique just to be clear c:)

I love how Stryxo is so in touch with his fanbase. Several times a week he asks for his community’s opinions on things. I think more yourubers shold do that

"Candybox" and "A Dark Room" are amazing idle games, because it is about resource management, but those resources allow you to go on an adventure. So the resource gathering is idle but the adventure is not. I think it strikes an amazing balance.

NGU Idle is by far the best and my favorite idle game, and it doesn't leave you with an empty feeling after playing, cause there's so much to do and the ending is satisfying.

I wish you had mentioned Universal Paperclips, since that is one of the few idle games with an actual story. Granted it doesnt last nearly as long as most idle games, but it does feel like just the right length to accomplish its goal.

I love how a game genre originally made as a critique of grinding in games and capitalism quickly became one of the most profitable game genres out there

Two of the best games in this genre imo are NGU idle and Trimps. NGU progressively opens up new mechanics and has alot of charm put into it while Trimps seems to hide alot from the player inittally and respects your time by having it's "ascension" mechanic progress you trough the game rather quickly.

I went through an Idler phase where I went HARD into games like Cookie Clicker, AdVenture Capitalist & a few others. It was honestly fairly fun, but then came the crushing spiral of checking once a day to see my progress. Ultimately feeling like I put nothing into this game and hating myself for finding enjoyment in something that I didn't actively try to accomplish. Basically, that shit had me severely depressed. I tried finding enjoyment in getting the achievements or trophies that the game has, but that just made me feel overly stressed when I put too much time into these sorts of Idle games which are designed to be played on occasion and not for hours at a time. My overall opinion of Idle games as of right now is: I like them, but don't really care much about how well I perform in them. It's better to just chill and then check them every few days devoting a couple hours to it when I have time and can be bothered to. It's also nice to have one in the background when you're reading, watching videos or doing work (especially for my ADD brain that easily loses focus). Basically, Idle games are fun when you don't care how much progress you make, but like to have something keeping you engaged.

Some favorites are Crank, Universal Paperclips, a dark room, and space plan. They're all not too long and they keep the player engaged with new mechanics and "plot"

When I was in high school, cookie clicker was HUGE. Everybody in my high school had a school-issued MacBook to use for homework, as this was around 5 years ago. Im not sure entirely how this started, but a buddy of mine showed me the game during my German language class, I think. The game had become a straight-up competition among a lot of the people in my class, with people going to crazy lengths to get the most cookies. Shit was seriously insane

Kitten's Game is definitely one of my favorites. It balances Idle and Active really well compared to other incrimental games that I've played, and initial progress is somewhat slow (it took me a week to prestige for the first time) but that slow pace helps the player adjust to the many different mechanics of the game. I would really recommend!

“And when the world needed Him the most…” “Stryxo Returned!”

Bloons TD 6 is one of the only "Idle games" that I like. It's fun to me, and challenging at times.

i actually know the person who made grindcraft. And he's been hard at work on another game for years that has a lot more passion in it. unfortunate that the guys wife passed away from cancer, but even if his prior works havent been amazing, i still have a lot of respect for the dude.

Kittens game is the best idle game I've ever played, simply because it is so huge and just gets bigger and bigger as time goes on. Most idle games get pretty stagnant after a couple prestiges, but in kittens game you unlock new things consistently that force you to change your entire setup. Plus the first presteige is only really worth it after 20+ days of gameplay

I love the psychology of games

NGU Idle is the best idle game of all time literally takes a year of daily playing to beat

I'm sure it's been mentioned somewhere, but I strongly recommend Melvor Idle to anyone who has nostalgia for Runescape. It's a very in-depth "love letter" to Runescape with its own unique aspects. These games are like fidget-spinners in game form - they're amusing and have their own intrigue and skill but of course you're not really getting much done.

For Idle games, I really enjoy Universal paperclips. It has a good progression and nothing ever seems too slow or too fast. It certainly isn't as long as some other Idle games but it does have a nice flow of the previously mentioned progression.

It's nice hearing windmill isle at the beginning of each of your videos because it is the best sonic ost I have ever heard

You honestly make really good vids, my attention is held throughout and I tend to end up talking to myself discussing the points you made, didn't really expect to be so entertained

there’s another idle game that is super underrated, Cell to Singularity. It has a lot of creative mechanics based on real life evolution and important historical events (like the James Webb telescope, 5 mass extinctions, philosophy, and fungi) free to playa no is still updated weekly

Great to see a new video of yours finally back in my feed! Video was great as always, keep up the hard work.

Let me say this first: I really enjoyed the video and I completely agree with your opinions on the genre. It's funny how you uploaded this video about this particular topic just two days after I decided to stop playing this idle game called NGU Idle. After almost 1800 hours of semi-active play I managed to advance to the next difficulty, only to find out that almost all of my progress on the previous difficulty is almost nullified. It made me feel like all of that time of me running the game even in the background was pointless, and as you've mentioned in the video, the feeling that I wasted a lot of time with the game was starting to sink in. I decided to play games that are actually interactive and give me the same sense of progression in a way shorter amount of time.

Something that i noticed about myself is i tend to subconsciously gravitate towards idle games whenever I'm busy

here's a few more good ones, since I love idle games. NGU is pretty good but a longg game. Synergism has many prestige tiers, but once you get late into ascension it suffers from needing guides because of the corruption mechanic. (At least there *are* guides, easily accessible on their discord, but it makes the game worse imo.) Jacorb's distance incremental falls under the same boat, but prestige tree is about a week of fun. One that I can really recommend is the perfect tower and the perfect tower 2. These ones are just a really fun time of trying to get your tower to the furthest extremes possible. Finally, one of the best idle games I could recommend is idle skilling. There's many, many tabs, which makes it avoid one problem most idle games have. In most idle games, there comes a point where there's simply nothing more to do, and you have to wait a while. You can click to speed up and stuff but you're basically just waiting. With the sheer amount of things you can be doing though, there's very little to worry about in terms of that for idle skilling. Anyways, hopes this helps someone find some nice games.

As someone who has sunk hundreds of hours into clicker heroes, I can definitely say the most appealing part to me is big number go up. Even just watching the hours on steam go up after I leave the game afk while I'm off at school or work is really satisfying to me.

i as an idle game player find that you described the genre appropriately. and to add to your list of recommendable games i would add "Idling to rule the gods"

I really enjoyed NGU Idle. By far the best idle game I've played. Great mechanics, pacing, community and humor.

Melvor Idle (an idle based off of, and now published by, RuneScape) is by far my favorite, and one of my favorite games of all time now. It perfectly captures everything I want in a game right now. Candy Box #1 and #2 (the game Cookie Clicker was inspired by) was super good as well. I think it went offline a few years ago, unfortunately.

Universal paperclips got me hoocked for a whole week lmao

there’s an idle game on cool math games that involves just an infinite pong type system, where balls spawn and have to destroy the blocks, but there’s the prestige mechanic, different types of balls that you can buy, and even bosses you can fight that are weak against a specific type of ball or strong against another, it’s very fun

I started playing this idle game a few weeks ago called farmers against potatoes. I'm addicted, I just like watching the number go up. Sometime you don't want to try at video games you just want to watch the numbers go up.

Clickpocalapse 2 is fantastic in this genre. Aswell as spaceplan

omfg you just finally made me remember grindcraft ater trying to remember its name for years!

My personal all time favorite Idle game is MelvorIdle, mainly because it has the end goal of 100% completion. Knowing where the game will end makes the everlasting bigger number chase more tangible for me, and therefore it feels less like a waste of time. Would highly recommend.

The difference between idle and incremental games is a matter of development philosophy. There are tons of great games at broken mouse convention

and to imagine you've only scratched the surface. I recommend you look into "universal paperclips", a relatively short incremental with an ending, a story, and a message all baked into it. Still, you choose what you play, and I certainly did enjoy your opinion piece on the genre.

I found one for the iphone called elvenar. Basically an idle game mixed with a city builder. Its my favorite idle game just because of the wrapping paper - building a city vs getting cookies.

My favorite idle games are all the TechTreeGames games. They have a nice simple art style, no required ads, rewards if you choose to watch ads. Theyre just nice.

Kittens Game is good civ builder idler. You can not just make number bigger, you can unlock new numbers to grow! It has several prestige/perma upgrade mechanics.. And it all starts with you being a kitten in the catnip forest!

"Bigger number, emptier feeling" me too bud

That feeling when your favorite RU-vidr posts

If universal paper clips isn’t here I will file a formal complaint with God

IDLE GAMES IN A NUT >click >get a unit of game currency >click more to buy an upgrade >u now click double >neuron activation

Hey Stryxo, I really hope you see this, but I just wanted to say I'm really proud of you as a RU-vidr. You're not afraid to cover whatever you want, and you're so involved with your community it's incredible. You've legitimately became my favorite RU-vidr and I get so excited when I see an upload of yours. Thank you so much for all you do, hope life is going well for you outside of this as well :)

I feel the same way about idle games that I think of like clash of clans were it is that it is fun to check in 1-2 a day and have it be fun and thats that, you can play an idle game without being as involved as other games like minecraft, in minecraft I will usually be brainstorming what I will do the next time I play it whereas idle games are more of a daily log on do something small and go and do something else.

i really like puzzles and optimation so these idles games rack my brain trying to find the most efficent method without making me too mentally tired like other puzzle games. I think one understated thing i also like playing these games with my friends to see who progresses fastest but one person will usuallly just play way more than the others and blow right ahead. but ultimately i love when slow grindy things become easy and quick from prestiging and the number go big really quick. As for viewing it as a waste of time i view it as a persevation of mental energy I can often get burnt out of bigger games like city skylines or factorio but these idle games are simple, usually free, and not mentally taxing i can sit there and watch my show and turn my brain off

1:11 cool mgsv reference there

I was a big fan of idle slayer. I recommend it. it is cool. you can play it 100% idle but being active does give you some benefits like a bonus stage. pretty cool

I like Cell to Singularity as an Idle game because it also teaches a lot of science stuff while you see numbers go up, very fun game

I scratch that "big number" itch with automation games like satisfactory, seeing that big number or conveyor line and knowing you built is is great

What I think people like the most in the idling games and many similar genres is progression. You start small, and become much more "powerful", your tasks get automated etc. The problem is the moment when you realise, that the progress is meaningless. Then I could drop game in seconds. The hard part of the game is to keep the illusion that there is a real goal and real progress to be made. Good way is to make every next upgrade meaningful enough and in sweet spot- not too far away to loose interest, and not too close to become effortless and your work meaningless. Not many games can do this though... It would also help if those games wouldn't be extremely linear, where your strategy usually does not matter that much, or you can just find best strategy online. There often are several strategies, but the way games are balanced, you have to find the optimal strategy and there are not many very different builds that can compete. Usually.

What can i say...Very informational video, well edited ! Worth a subscribe!

My favorite idle/incremental game is Idle Wizard. There are soo much mechanics and stuff you can do and progression you can do, but has one major drawback is that you NEED to follow guides otherwise you won't be able to progress much and the other drawback is that not every class is viable, but still 10/10 game I love it. (2000 hours on the game :D)

egg inc. is one of my personal favorite idle games

Glad to see more people make content on idle games

Great video! I've never been super into idlegames, yet I really liked to hear what you had to say on the topic!

I knew this was coming whenever you brought up that you were playing Cookie Clicker in that one WildSpartanz video

I have an ongoing cookie clicker save that I play every day. I use a fully idle strat where all I do is trade stocks, pop wrinklers and buy more buildings and upgrades. I just keep the tab open to poke at whenever I hit a transition art period or need to wait for something for a few minutes. It's a nice little release that doesn't suck me in and waste a bunch of time because of the way I have it set up.

I love idle games because they're one of the few games you can play while watching an anime or something

My favorites are Candy Box, NGU Idle, Structure, and Trimps.

I cannot express the sheer horror I went through when I saw my cookie clicker save went through the Hellish landscape that is the Grandmapocalypse. It's made more evident because my gf played the game sometime ago and just pressed on the One Mind upgrade that triggers the Event, without knowing this I was pondering about wtf just happened

two amazing clicker games to play, that both have endings: - infinite paperclips - spaceplan

I could not have expected a positive take less. Nice

Grindcraft is my childhood game i loved playing this!

Was really expecting to see Legends of IdleOn in this list. It has a great balance of idle and active play and it's the first Idle game that has a goal besides Bigger Numbers.

due to unforseen circumstances, i now have 9 nonillion total cookies

did not realize how many idle games there are

i love leaf blower and played it from day 1, so glad to see it mentioned in a video

I opened this video so i can binge play Leaf Blower Revolution while listening this

Looking at you, universal paperclips

SLICING DEAMONS IN HALF, cute little fox

The IDLE world is huge, you have a variety of different types, with very cool mechanics out there. I recommend 2 : Trimps (on Steam or browser) and kittens game .. this are games where you will invest a lot of months/years, but they will be worth it to play it.

Some of the best incremental games go completely unmentioned in this video and require a try to see some gems. Most idle games are copy-pasted mobile garbage, but deemphasis on graphics allows solo developers to create very mechanically complicated games with interesting progression. Synergism is an antimatter dimensions style game with incredible synergy (ha ha) between all the mechanics and is still being updated. Evolve Idle has massive amounts of content and is very similar to kittens game, but better in many ways I would say. It also still receives updates. I love the theming and the mechanical evolution. Finally, my current favorite is Idle Loops, which has really fun story-mechanic synergy. Be sure to play the modified version that adds content, as the original developer has abandoned it. Every video game is just watching numbers go up. Why not cut out the middle man?

Casually playing alpha minecraft? Giga Chad energy.

You guys gotta try Idle Breakout if you like idle games. Its a game from coolmath games (that one website kids used when they procrastinate in school) where you can upgrade balls, make money, get better upgrades, until you max out everything. The game also has prestige in the form of gold ingots which you get after a certain amount of levels which you can collect by resetting but use them for OP upgrades to get back to where you were faster

you should do tower defense games next. they are fun lol

I used to really enjoy Abyssrium. It had really peaceful and pretty graphics of the sea creatures which swim around and it gave you new creatures to work towards. I think the increasing addition of in-app purchases and events made it feel more insidious and less enjoyable though

one you should've tried (shown on the steam page in the video) is melvor idle, little more expensive than most clickers but in my opinion far more "rewarding" and not quite as idle as the others. it's basically idle runescape, you go through dungeons, level skills, but unlike your average idle game there's no prestige, skills can go up theoretically forever, but once you get to 99 (120 in the expansion) you're sort of done, there's even a completion long for how what items you've owned, pets you've found, dungeons you've completed etc. the thing i like about it over a lot of idle games is you still get that addictive "number go up" feeling, but it doesn't feel hollow, because there's an end point, a goal to reach and feel excitement over, like getting a 99 in runescape, you feel like you earned it, there's plenty of ways to go about levelling skills in different orders, do you train one skill or train another that has an item that trains the first ? and dungeons and monsters require quite a bit of thought, it's not just number go up into ballbagillion, there's end points. and a hardcore mode where your save is deleted if you die, you can win, and you can lose, but it's still idle. there's also games like (i forgot the name) reactor idle or factory idle, where you really have to think about your strategys, the one's you've picked are very "normal" and it's a bigger genre than just the surface ones

Idle Slayer. Best one out there.

I play a lot of Crusader of The Lost Idles. That isn't a clicker game but just an idle one and it is very complex because you not only collect idols from resets but characters you put in different formations to try and go deeper

thanks for actually playing cookie clicker. i've seen a few other cookie clicker videos where they only have a handful of ascension upgrades and it's clear they haven't actually played the game all that much. i guess it all boils down to making upgrades and getting higher numbers, so idk if it matters that much lol, but i appreciate the fact that you actually put time into what you're talking about.

Leaf blower simulator sometimes gets a high cliff

2 very different kind of idle games that are also good is Candybox 1/2 and The Dark Room. I can't recommend them enough if you are just getting interested in these type of games. Also of course: Universal Paperclips

1:08 cries in Hypixel Skyblock

after 8 years I'm about to beat adventure capitalist

i play factory idle, which has just enough creativity to keep me engaged, but not so much that i have to pause my show to pay attention to it. i would recommend it, it doesn't make me feel like i'm wasting my time when i play it because it's (somewhat) based on strategy.

OMG IM SO GLAD YOU TALKED ABOUT LEAF BLOWER REVOLUTION. FANTASTIC CLICKER GAME!!!!!

_scoffs in Adventure Capitalist_

ive been playing cookie clicker a lot recently and I unlocked "One Mind" yesterday and my progress just SKYROCKETED, god vid

A dark room & universal paperclips are great!

one underrated idle game is the moble game idle supermarket tycoon

I love your vids bro 👍👍👍 I was wondering when you’d post again it was worth the wait

Idk why I never saw that this was posted. Good vid

As a leaf blower revoultion expert it is very bad example because we use 5 strolls and upgrade our items and it go crazy later on

Can personally recommend NGU Idle and Idleon MMO, both these games are very satisfying to play and unlock new stuff. I have completed NGU, and I'm still enjoying Idleon, and happy to see the developer making frequent updates. To me, these games just hit the sweet spot in game mechanics, graphics, humor and freetoplay/paytowin balance.

Not seeing any Universal Paperclips appreciation