Clicker Games Click-All

Aristophan wrote:

I finished up Crank today, and I enjoyed it. Like Universal Paperclips, it has a definite end. Thanks for the suggestion Yoyoson!

I started it up (again; I've played it before), and am thrashing around, unable to find the end-game.

Spoiler:

I can navigate space to sectors leveled 5, but can't figure out what I need to do to trigger the decoding part of things.

At this point, my plasma guns are ridiculously overleveled.

I went poking around browser-based clickers, and have been entertained by Evolve. It reminds me of Civilization, if you play Civilization like I do by hiding away and researching everything. It's very much about navigating the tech tree. Unfortunately, that means it's a bit more hands-on, since your research capacity fills up fairly quickly, and you need to spend on the tech tree to free up more space. (The opening stage is a bit more hands-on, but quickly turns to the tech-tree/research loop.)

Katy wrote:
Spoiler:

I can navigate space to sectors leveled 5, but can't figure out what I need to do to trigger the decoding part of things.

At this point, my plasma guns are ridiculously overleveled.

Spoiler:

Have you traveled to the sectors with 0% solar and look like they're made of TV static?

I finished Crank but found the whole thing very disappointing. There's a long, long gap between the point where you've seen and done all the "things" there are to see and do, and the point where the game actually says it's finished. The interim is just a long slog of traveling slowly between distant places, and upgrading stuff to see if anything new will happen (it doesn't).

merphle wrote:
Spoiler:

Have you traveled to the sectors with 0% solar and look like they're made of TV static?

Ah... that would do it!

Spoiler:

I hadn't built up my ship to the point where those sectors were viable in the mid-game, so I'd avoided them in favor of high(er)-solar sectors.

Oh, protip on Crank, for avoiding battles you can't win:

Spoiler:

As long as your drive is charged up you can travel to other planets any time, including during battle.

fenomas wrote:

I finished Crank but found the whole thing very disappointing. There's a long, long gap between the point where you've seen and done all the "things" there are to see and do, and the point where the game actually says it's finished. The interim is just a long slog of traveling slowly between distant places, and upgrading stuff to see if anything new will happen (it doesn't).

On a related note, there seems to be some sort of bug (I assume, maybe it's intentional) where as the game progresses you find objects in your scanner less and less. You'll be pouring 40 power into your scanner and you'll find things way slower than back when you only had a 3 power scanner.

So in the early middle it may be viable to go to a moderate Enemy system (maybe because the Solar value is high) fight them down in density, and then attack the station. Very soon that stops being feasible, you'll instead need to hop around to systems that already have low density so that you can immediately attack the Station.

I ran into that bug as well. It seemed to work better when I kept the screen forced on the radar, but it was certainly annoying in the mid-game.

Katy wrote:

I went poking around browser-based clickers, and have been entertained by Evolve. It reminds me of Civilization, if you play Civilization like I do by hiding away and researching everything.

Thanks for this recommendation. For those that are interested at this point (I haven't reset yet and am only in the iron age, so I don't know what sort of craziness happens later on, or what the loop mechanics are like) it seems very, very similar to the Kittens game, albeit I think this first run to the iron age is faster than the first kitten run is. The first component Katy mentioned is also an Evolution game that ends up helping to generate your species, so it seems like there may be a more involved repeat system based on choosing what species you will be playing this run, a bit similar to Realm Grinder, but so far to a much lesser extent.

Kittens goes in wacky directions (

Spoiler:

Religion, Lovecraftian, and Sci-Fi craziness

), I'm hoping Evolve does cool stuff too.

Yonder wrote:

The first component Katy mentioned is also an Evolution game that ends up helping to generate your species, so it seems like there may be a more involved repeat system based on choosing what species you will be playing this run, a bit similar to Realm Grinder, but so far to a much lesser extent.

I'm only on my second iteration, so I can't really give too much insight -- you have to choose a different species the second time around, and then there's another branch point based on whether you worship those who came before you or are of a more research/anthropological bent. Like most clicker games, there's a multiplier effect (in this case from the plasmids you get either from a reset or genome research) so things move faster the second time around.

Count me in on Evolve as well. Thanks Katy! I'm still on my first species, closing in on the industrial revolution.

Evolve is more my style - letting it run in the background and tweaking things from time to time. Thanks!

I progressed to a second species last night, and wow, the speedup buff given for subsequent species is a welcome change.

Aristophan wrote:

I haven't found much lately that really got me hooked. Spaceplan ($3) is still the best in terms of telling a story, and Adventure Capitalist was my favorite free iPad clicker.

EDIT: And I forgot, but Egg, Inc. was also a favorite.

Oh yeah! I went deep into Egg, Inc. The way the chickens would come flooding out of the hen house was so satisfying. I will give spaceplan a look.

I recently got hooked on Idle Human by Green Panda Games. It’s pretty fascinating.

NGU Idle is a new idle game on Steam. Seems pretty good. Something about it reminds me a bit of Anti Idle on Kongregate, 10 years back or so.

polq37 wrote:

NGU Idle is a new idle game on Steam. Seems pretty good. Something about it reminds me a bit of Anti Idle on Kongregate, 10 years back or so.

I've put way too much time into NGU on Kongregate and don't think I'll be stopping anytime soon. It does a good job of always giving you another target to go after.

To think of all the constructive things I could have done with that time....!

Numbers Go Up you say? Giving this a try since sleep is eluding me. Adventure mode seems to be mostly about inventory management. I think I wasted a couple dozen powerups before the merging mechanic 'clicked.'

Edit: I don't always use Steam Link to play games remotely on my phone, but when I do I'm playing a clicker game.

Welp, thanks to this thread showing up again in my feed, I've now fired Cookie Clicker up again.

I hope you're all happy.

Eleima wrote:

Welp, thanks to this thread showing up again in my feed, I've now fired Cookie Clicker up again.

I hope you're all happy.

:D

Bump so you stop slacking and get back to clicking... Need to make those cookies....

Thanks for the recommendation for NGU Idle somewhere upthread - I've been enjoying it quite a bit for the past few weeks

Tanglebones wrote:

Thanks for the recommendation for NGU Idle somewhere upthread - I've been enjoying it quite a bit for the past few weeks

Same!
Just unlocked diggers and am trying to decide if I should take a crack at some challenges.

manta173 wrote:
Eleima wrote:

Welp, thanks to this thread showing up again in my feed, I've now fired Cookie Clicker up again.
I hope you're all happy.
:D

Bump so you stop slacking and get back to clicking... Need to make those cookies....

Passive upgrades FTW!

NGU Idle update:
I kept playing. Slowly creeping my number up, completing some challenges. On Black Friday I purchased a video card upgrade for my system and after installing that my computer would suddenly randomly freeze. The display would go dark (no input) and there would be no response from keyboard or mouse or new USB devices connected to the system. Hard freeze. Nothing logged. Most of the time while I was away from the machine (it stays on 24/7), sometimes while I'm sitting at it. No indication of any specific issue. After several weeks of trying to pin down the cause (TeamViewer injects a custom display driver that breaks HDCP encryption), WorldCommunity Grid is set to use the GPU when the system is mostly idle, the motherboard is old enough that the battery was weak and needed to be replaced, and then suddenly I had a burst of inspiration: As far as I could recall NGU Idle was running (idling) every time my system froze!
So I've stopped letting NGU Idle stay open for a few days. No freezes. I was in the middle of an extended multi-day no-freezes run when I came home to an hours-long power failure, resetting the clock.

So I'm not 100% certain NGU Idle is definitively the cause, yet. Sharing just in case anyone else suddenly runs into some odd system freezes.
NGU Idle on Steam.
NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super.
I'm currently at the wall between unlocking beards and actually having enough Adventure stats to survive in the Beardverse. Might need to dig back into challenges while my NGU goblins work on multiplying that stat.

Worth watching:

Rezzy wrote:

NGU Idle update:
So I'm not 100% certain NGU Idle is definitively the cause, yet. Sharing just in case anyone else suddenly runs into some odd system freezes.
NGU Idle on Steam.
NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super.
I'm currently at the wall between unlocking beards and actually having enough Adventure stats to survive in the Beardverse. Might need to dig back into challenges while my NGU goblins work on multiplying that stat.

I just got back into NGU idle. I noticed that computer fan was suddenly spinning up when I was away from my computer. After fighting with performance monitor for a bit, it looks like NGU idle is the likely culprit. I wonder if it is bitcoin mining when the user is away.

polq37 wrote:

After fighting with performance monitor for a bit, it looks like NGU idle is the likely culprit. I wonder if it is bitcoin mining when the user is away.

Update... the system just experienced the same kind of crash while playing a LEGO game via Steam Link. Call off the hounds, the crash is not unique to NGU Idle.

PCGamer: Ubisoft increases its investment in more free to play idle games

A AAA publisher getting into Idle Games? Is that some sort of oxymoron?

They may have discovered that Fallout Shelter drove sales higher for Fallout 4?

Is Fallout Shelter an Idle game? I've played it, I just can't make up my mind on that classification... it's definitely one of those freemium mobile titles with long wait times on actions, but I didn't really classify it as idle.

It's certainly not unheard of for an AAA developer to make mobile games. And idle games are a niche that is pretty popular right now. But they always tend to be relatively easy to produce, one guy and an idea maybe fleshed out over a couple years.... Seems like any tie-in idle game you'd put together would at most take a small team.

Frahg wrote:

Is Fallout Shelter an Idle game?

I didn’t play it much. I didn’t really like it. It’s a game of timers. You can tap on coins as they spawn to collect them. I guess for me that qualifies as idle.

There is a new Cookie Clicker update, I REPEAT, new Cookie Clicker update!!
New building, new achievements, new prestige stuff.