From Tap Titans to Nonstop Knight and Egg, Inc: Trends in idle games

hello and welcome to Pocket Gamer office I'm John Jordan in this video we're looking at idle or clicker games this is tap Titans from game hive and this is the starting point for the current crop of idle games on mobile so as we can see in the ideal games they'll point it you don't have to touch them and they play themselves so I'm not touching the screen at all you can see there's easy these enemies appear in the middle of the screen there's a mini-boss turned up and I've got all these characters who are my I've unlocked through gameplay and they're just automatically just destroying these characters they come up I get more gold and the point of kind of idle games is in some ways it's kind of a little bit seems little bit pointless you have to play them on the point is you can you can come in and kind of speed stuff up but basically you don't have to play them they're just idle games at idle

themselves so what you cut the odd minutes why does anyone want to play them and this is why it's interesting you know how can you make something that effectively is pointless have a point is why it's interesting to look at idle games and why designing idle games is a much harder skill but maybe than designing other other genres so these guys are just banging away and making me gold so you can see here I've not looked in for quite long time so my goal was just gone through I've got um 83.4 5 AAA so quite what that means I've unlocked the enchanted garden so if I if I tap on the screen I kind of caused this these guys to get destroyed faster so there's kind of a point to me actually doing something the kind of the point of the game is one of these looks nice and it is fun you just see go whatever and I can go in and I've got these special power-ups you can see that come over have certain periods of time and now this the sword one has a timed out for 10 minutes I can go in here and I can

level up my sword master probably other people who's anyone I can unlock I can unlock a skill here this is the main character with the hat on and I'm just using up some of my key to the gulps going I've been there but very much because I got so much I can go in who have we got in my squad can i unlock anyone new there we go I can get sterling the enchant or he's gonna take off my money so now I can level up this so if you really wanted to you could just choose to load up some of my suppose but I guess most people were just the point of these games is not really to think too much about them just kind of like get money spend money come back in the game what can I do with the money I've got anything else I can do here what any artifacts can so I've got some hard currency here so I can use some hard currency and get even more cool stuff there you go use a perk and now I'm going to hit 20 times a second so just like I'll just speed it up my tabs what

can I do I can get more gold so maybe that's kind of pointless here we going to level up this chair guy go so now my money's going down to tea so come from double ace two teas trilliant I suppose can't my level that up anymore quite quickly may have stupid amounts of money and those ones a case that's gonna take ages let's find someone who's bit more powerful to level up these teas so you can basically work your way down leveling up as you go so this is about trillions and I'm living up billions what's up here I probably got some I've got some rewards I've checked it off cold so obviously these are free to play games and you can buy currency and you can see I'm on level 665 so yes that was the first one tapped items from game 5 that was out kind of late 2014 so not that long ago really so where has the genre gone then look at some more so this game is build away so this is a 2016 game this is from a company called

a company called future play so I've collected 166 AA's get not played for a long time I can double it up so this is a really good use of what they call rewarded video ads so if I want to double that then just watch a video ad hood particular to your video ad at the moment so very much more kind of simple graphically I guess nice ever I scream you like watch a short ad to increase my profits the basic is going can equip all this stuff or can I do I can search different things I think I'm kind of leveling up slightly different here you're leveling up on different scales I got the heart hand got the electricity seen from speeding stuff are speeding up the color gold production you can see very quickly in this case I've basically used up all that money which is nothing an hour can level up any more so it's a more sophisticated approach in terms of the rewarded video ads property most most I'm games have a very low RP people are spending money

really in these games so you have have to have other ways of kind of again getting them to monetize meetings here the top there's I've got kind of the money all that they've got some more by tapping on that if I didn't had that open I wouldn't have had the chance to get all that and you can see it's quite nice into cars and moose was tapping around there there's a few other social things so what's this so scoop I can watch it add to I'd relate stuff in this game hollow I've got a gift gonna work tips of crash oh well you get the idea so let's look at something else so another one that means to eat more interesting I suppose in a way for a clicker so Katamari pretty big what he's not big brain is a bit silly I am iconic brand limited time over so if he's just rolling up the katamari collecting stuff

I can tap it and he goes faster so obviously the interesting thing here is it's Katamari cutter a nice brand look I can collect all that and again double it by watching a TV ad so you can see these kind of games very much taken the trend of rewarded video ads and actually there is it there is a integration intent intact items but not a very obvious one so it was the first one to come because it came out so early rewarded video ads weren't such a big part of monetization at that point so it come up is while I guess one of the best note and I took kick games it's not on the desktop monitors in so who we got here I can and call really so a few other people to help me out my lips things you see if I'm not these little guys the bottom of the screen clowns can watch the coin fever have I got any what

I can level up my prince which is my character this mean I get to level a hundred I can unlock something else there we go just the katamari first important the whole point in these games is the game plays very simple but now I've just got little missions I've got a time-based mission so I've gotta do this in a certain time so it's all about kind of adding adding psychological cooks really into getting you to play the game come back into the game with excellence I start tapping these people they feel good and it's why I kind of clickers are are really interesting to look at so Katamari what else we got so this is probably the has been the most successful and Leeson monsters again in 2016 this is nonstop night from qapla

games which isn't have been purchased by the publisher of this game flair games german publisher so it's very simple non-stop nightmare is so the night just runs around bashing things in as little enemies got a little pet is blue flying dragon ething i come into the game i can use these big button to the bottom slammed slash in a little clonal appeared you can see those green clone this clones actually heals meets in the must feel things so they go off together again not being in this one for a while so i can see there's bounty so i can kind of have this very strong achievement system I've killed 350,000 enemies so I can claim some staff and this is going to actually do what for all the video as I can buy there's a bit of a stronger monetization options in here it's my pet doing and this is my pet so I have to unlock different things to get different

pets so I so the other thing here is it's very very clear what you're doing this game I think clear and then at the game what's been successful so I can just level up use my coin just level up these living up my weapon leveling up my armor living up my cloak Columbia nope done okay and then do something here I mean normally an idol games paid they will play themselves but they'll want you to come back to do with specific things they wrote the automatically so in this case it's the boss battle so the boss comes in I can't do this on my own notes watch enough so the interesting about this game as well it happens in other games is you kind of got chest water system I'm so what did I get I like it I got a scary mantle been this in this game to add little extra attention if sort of interest in the game I can go up on doing now that you have this a send button

so we'll get enough tokens I can ascend which Bailey takes me all the way back to dungeon one by keep all the kind of permanent attributes I've kept a long way so I'm much much much much stronger so this is a complete thing I find engages that have this kind of let you know because effectively what's happening is dull but the kind of collection of items and lots of things like that unlocking new pets and stuff that's will keep you interesting so it's all about the meta game and let's take us to the game that just came out recently in this field egg Inc so this again is a little bit different but here we go so welcome back so egging is about hens so you kind of very nice art style and what you do is you just tap on the screen and all these hens come bombing out and they just go into some hen houses

okay just leave it that's going to do so I can research the company can have comfortable nets which will increase my egg-laying I can increase my neutral nutritional supplements that Beckett better incubator so this is all considered top my money's just going up so it's kind of a nice loop in the sense that the hens are already in these so you can fill these up in housing but their hens are already in there so it's here but 4200 hens and they're laying eggs so the eggs of all that give me the money what else can I do so actually being my shipping depo can't can't cope so I could my transit can I am but oh no no money can't operate Taron new vehicle another trans expert can operate them try another transit so

much shipping can keep up and you have this nice little kind of graphical thing here where the I guess and then I just kind of like mob around a little bit look a bit lost which is what hands do isn't it over here I've got current missions start a new farming up a deck so uh-huh so this is what's talking about sending before I can start a new farm but my egg will be better again so boosts we've got some currency so I could boost for 30 seconds for an hour for eight hours or watch get to lots of forever watching the video so you see video ads are very important to this that's just the menu I've got our daily reward of eggs and let me get that scooter look at that's going to go we achieve ins so this is this is in a sense the kind of got to the stage I think of beings like the ultimate kind of Idol click again because if you don't do anything there's no there's like absolutely nothing at the on screen were like this my transit vans turning up but

it just kind of happens and the graphical interfaces is there but it's all happening behind the scenes of course this is Dylan the nice bit doesn't really this is not really kind of adding to gameplay in the sense that you're filling up your hand houses with hens and it just looks super nice so any screenshots of this game and all about getting without any ends in it we're gonna be full soon Oh big time but I'll see if I build another hangouts I could build another Super Shack there it is totally empty that one so tap tap tap tap tap all over again or I can just tap a blonde finger you have anyone a few but this is kind of this interest this kind of way of making you wanna come back to a game that actually is kind of a little bit pointless that's what's very clever so that's why it's always worth investigating idle and clicker games because while lots of other games are spending a lot of time getting very hard on monetization very

hard on retention this is much kind of much much more much much much more casual experience but one that has to be much clearer as well to get people back any kind of a big narrative in Italy game or it's probably hard to I would suggest but um if you get the right psychological hooks people can get really into these games and certainly we've had people who when they it's going to come out I just like logging in every half an hour just to do those little bits of leveling up that you can't do automatically that's what makes them very interesting if nothing else experiments in where free-to-play games are heading so thanks for watching maybe download some of those some of the games we mentioned and have a go and see if you can find yourself addicted to or to a click game so if I was watching I hope to see you guys soon