IdleOn - The Incremental MMO

The dev is more concerned with taking all your money through P2W packs than with finishing his game. If you're willing to spend $20 or $30 every week, this game is for you. For F2P players, the gap is absolutely enormous.

I have almost 7k hours on this game per steam. I love idle games and I refuse to pay-to-win. if this sentence rings with you, this review will help. Tldr; Game used to be good, early game is still good, but if knowing the late game is terrible, don't waste your time. Developer got greedy and everything is a cash grab, obnoxious RNG (literal raw gambling on just about everything) floods late game, and late game updates are hit or miss- mainly miss. When i first started this game- it rocked. You had your dudes, you made them do different things to gather various resources to craft things so you can progress, you let it sit like an idle game and could actively play it when you feel like it- it was perfect. It was complicated enough to allow the player to plan, and had few things to be annoyed about such as possibly making a bad decision that could screw you over forever (like investing points into something that couldn't be refunded, luckily I never fell for any traps) - small stuff, but generally inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Then the developer destroyed this game in three ways: The first issue, and in my opinion the bigger one, is the HEAVY lean into RNG. Like what the literal crap is this? Just about EVERY late game mechanic is complete RNG. I'm not talking about a rare drop, or low rates- i mean slap-in-the-face you're a monkey on a slot machine. I was so excited for the minesweeper update- nope, just RNG. Spelunking? RNG in every action and your 20 minute run can be thrown away because of it. Research? Hope you like rolling the dice every day- and if you win, hope you make a good decision because they're a limited resource you can't refund. Every event? RNG- the one that broke the camel's back for me was the cropfall event. Bet on a higher and lower card? What are you telling your player base? Hope you like gambling? Can we participate in your events without being particularly lucky or throwing our wallets at you? I thought this was a creative idle game where you can plan out how you want to progress, not a casino. I wish the game went back to simple "increase your drop rate to get more materials or get the rare drop you want, or increase your efficiency, etc." I feel like this was intentional on the developers part so that he can make people feel like they need to buy something so they can feel like a winner. The second issue, and a close second, is the greed. I am proud to say all I did was by the generic $5 pack at the beginning to support the dev. I didn't fall for any of the stupid packs or any of that nonsense. I opened his stream a few times to see what was up- I swear it's a cult of people hoping to get freebies from the dev. It felt like a ploy to make the people who don't win anything in his giveaways feel pressed to buy whatever he's selling to feel like they aren't losers. It felt gross in my opinion, but that's just me. Anyway I digress, the problem is the packs basically make the game playable. Most of the late game content requires some serious luck, time investment, and monotonous gameplay to progress- but all of it can be bypassed with purchases of his stupid packs- and you used to be able to earn gems in the game to buy stuff from the premium store, but it's become pointless because he's made it more difficult to get gems and stuff cost more gems, and most of the good stuff is for cash anyway. In my opinion, the dev should've just made each world cost a dollar. Lets just say he has 200k players in late game (gross underestimation). Make the first world free, $ for each of the rest, that's $200k for the release of a single world and he has 6 not including 1. I'm CERTAIN people would pay a dollar each world- but this guy wants to cater to whales instead of making the game actually fun. Lastly the most recent updates have been... well... iffy? I can see what he's doing with making a new skill that has different parts that will unlock in time... but he's releasing parts that can't really be played with until he unlocks more stuff- and if you decide you want to really push it as far as you can, when he does the next update it usually adds some massive rate increase through some other module that just makes you feel stupid for wasting your time- especially if you invest limited resources that you can't get back. It's rare for an update to be flushed out and even more rare for it to be fun. One of my biggest issues with the more recent updates is the lack of clarity. For example, there are mechanics that you can only see the upgrades you can purchase, but you can't see upgrades that aren't purchasable yet (Masterclasses, Sushi station, Minesweeper (Depth charge), Research station, Caverns, Clamworks, Zenith Statues, Coral... just about everything....), at first glance not an issue but the charm of planning what you want to do in an idle game is GONE. Let's say for example you decide you want to progress the research station. Generally, you get points over time that get harder to obtain after each one. You have a grid that you can buy that goes in all directions and there may or may not be upgrades in every direction. If you spend a point to find out, and there's nothing there, you've just wasted a limited resource for nothing. Keep in mind, new updates don't have information online yet- also googling information in an idle game has the potential of killing the fun because you may find answer that you wanted to find yourself. Then there are the slap in the face updates like the Pet Tournaments. Literally translates to "he who paid me more has a higher CHANCE to win." The Royal Guardian seems insanely slow to progress and honestly... I'm just not interested in putting forth the effort just for it to be boosted by the next update. Why bother on an incomplete mechanic? If the argument is "we don't want the people in late game to finish a mechanic and be done with it", then don't release them one at a time partially. The beauty i found in this game was revisiting perks as I got an upgrade elsewhere. Flush out the whole thing and release it together. I think that defeats the developers goal of catering to whales who buy progress every time a new mechanic is released- he knows what he's doing. I could go on for hours on individual minigames/mechanics, but it suffices to say none of the recent ones are nearly as good as the earlier ones. I for one think i am done with this game. It's a shame because it had SO much potential- it lost its soul to greed.