I’m up to sector 30 in Unnamed Space Idle. There’s a lot of things you can push to improve your numbers, huh.
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I’m nearing Sector 40 and I feel one detail about the game that helps the progression feel much smoother is while the systems affect each other, their sources tend to be largely independent.
You do need to insert Void Matter into both the Reactor and the Compute, but the other tabs just work by themselves. Everything you craft in Synth only is relevant to Synth, everything you produce in Base is only relevant in Base, Warp charges on its own, etc.
It really avoids bottlenecks that some Idlers often encounter, and you also have the constant feeling that you’re always progressing something. Maybe your Synth slowed down, but you’re still doing research. Maybe your Reactor reached its max, but you’re still unlocking new Base segments.
The loops all feed into the main ship, but this degree of independence really simplifies the general progress, as well as giving you small boosts of satisfaction.
Definitely. The exception here would be the shards, which explicitly are mutually-exclusive buffs to other systems, but the loadouts are usually pretty clear if you know what you’re working towards.
Trying to infinite a tier of synth? A couple slots immediately lock themselves in. Pushing reactor upgrades? Pretty obvious too. And so on.
I don’t super love the explicit time gating with warps, but the game around it progresses so naturally that I’ve not been minding–and it gives you stuff to do actively when you check in.
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Decided to give this a try, and I’m enjoying what I see. There’s the base default “Idle” that these AFK games have - when you log in, you receive a large amount of materials that were gathered in your absence that can be used to level up your heroes and what not. Its a satisfying way to make it all a little less FomO-ish.
But I’m also interested in some QoL mechanics I’m spotting. For example, it seems you don’t level your characters but rather the spot that they’re placed on (the “Resonance Level”). So if you level a spot to 11, and decide later to replace the hero that was assigned there, it’ll be at level 11 as well, regardless if you ever played with them before.
Another thing is how you don’t equip individual heroes, but rather their class. When you get a Tank weapon, its assigned to all tanks, when you get a Support headgear, its assigned to all supports. No need to worry about scarcity (so far, at least)
Game also looks pretty, I’m quite fond of the fluid portraits and the art style.
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nice, glad you’re liking it! yeah it’s become a quick little daily routine for me haha. i really appreciate how smooth it is and again the portrait mode goes hard. you don’t have to tinker too much, just get those idle rewards, pump the numbers up and go again. I’m sure it won’t be this way forever but i’ll enjoy it for now haha
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I decided to try out AFK Journey myself the other day after seeing it around, maybe it’s a liiittle too involved to qualify as an idle game haha, but it’s neat so far. The character designs are pretty generic, and I’m skipping the story because I’m not really interested, but yeah the art design itself and UI is very nice. Tons of different game modes too, I’ve just had the game up on my computer over this weekend and tab in once in a while, but whenever I hit a roadblock in the main exploration I just check in on AFK battle progress, try to progress more on the dream battle, and I just unlocked the labyrinth mode from reaching AFK battle 100. It is a live service gacha and I personally avoid recommending those to others because of the predatory aspect, but personally as a person who can ignore monetization and go full f2p I’m having a smooth time so far.
I’m playing it on PC right now, and while it runs fine it’s very much “mobile game ported to computer” design and control-wise, lol. My hands would benefit from being able to use my tablet to click on it instead of all the mouse controls, but weirdly enough my pen input turns off only when the AFK Journey window is in focus. 
Weird but I’m managing. I don’t think I’ll be putting it on my phone because I’ve been trying to phone detox a bit lately and having this on there would make me want to check in a bunch. (Edit: I checked my tablet driver settings and flipping Windows Ink on made it work yay)
I also tried out AFK Journey. It was fine for a few days, but I just don’t get into games as formulaic as that anymore. There was a lot of cool QoL in there that even some “indie” incrementals could learn from I think, but the game as a whole is just not… enough.
On the opposite end of the quality spectrum…
I wonder if anybody recognizes this lmao
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I also put AFK Journey away after a week or so. It was a fun distraction for a while esp since I could play it with one hand and my pen since I’m going through a hand pain spell right now, but all the mobile game lootboxiness and daily login chores is something I have low patience for and also feels so conflicting with the AFK concept. I enjoy the skinnerbox of making a number go up and knowing that if I walk away and come back later I’ll get a fun present of the number having gone up without me, piling on a bunch of monetization and login compulsion skinnerboxing on top of it completely detracts from the base appeal.
I don’t know what game your image is from though… 
My experience with idle games in general isn’t actually that deep, mostly having played Cookie Clicker on and off over the years, and I’ve checked out and had fun with a couple of the browser games shared in here.
It’s from a very old flash game incremental game called Anti-Idle! It’s very… innovative (or idiosyncratic is a better word), even compared to modern entries in the genre. It being a flash game it’s kinda dead, though there is an .exe of it in a random google drive accessible through the unofficial Discord (sigh lmao).
Since I discovered it I’ve been replaying it a bit. I don’t know how tolerable it is without a significant chunk of nostalgia, though :')
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Anti-Idle was the main inspiration for NGU Idle, I’ve never tried it though.
I have only been checking it out every day or every couple of days, its not terribly engrossing as a gacha or mobile or idle game. Its fine but these types of games really demand some attention that I really can’t give.
just picked up a cute new one on Steam today called Rusty’s Retirement. running at the bottom of my screen while we speak, keeping me company while I write my paper :D
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I was just about to post about this! Showed up in my RSS reader today
Deets for anyone who wants to learn more
yeah, I’ve encountered other similar games before but I like this one. don’t know if it’ll scratch the itch for more hardcore idle gamers and there’s at least one major QOL issue I have with it, but it’s very cute and it scratches my brain while I work without being TOO distracting. ADHD approved.
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It took a long while, but Space Idle is finally losing its steam with me. The “Task List” between Sectors 70 and 75 just feels like a lot of busywork, and the upgrades opportunites between them are very sparse.
Still, that was a very nice ride, I’ll at least make one final push and see if the Carrier feels refreshing, but otherwise I’m happy enough shelving this as it is.
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I got back into Melvor Idle, just in time for the next big expansion for it. I kinda transitioned back into it as I stopped playing Runescape itself as much.
Funny, I’ve been thinking about getting into Runescape, as Melvor didn’t really do much for me.
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this one seems tailor-made to get me into the genre, damn
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Magic Research 2 is out. I just got it, so I’ll post thoughts in a few days.
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