Melvor Idle
I've brushed over this multiple times, dismissing it as a mobile game. That was a mistake! Although I initially found it hard to get into, they've since added a tutorial to explain basic mechanics - and if you can get over the UI being a bit unintuitive, there's a great game to be found underneath. The term "Idle" does it a disservice I think - it's actually a deep game with lots of interconnecting systems and very satisfying whether you're playing actively, or a few minutes a day. It's not "incremental" where progress is exponential; they get boring quickly. At it's core - you are an MMO character gaining skills and resources, but the game is all played through the UI.
Pros
- There are loads of different skills to level up
- Within each skill are items or subskills, which all have their own mastery level (so you might be 99 at woodcutting, but only 14 mastery in redwood trees)
- All of the skills in the game are interconnected somehow. Woodcutting gives you fuel for Firemaking, which provides coal for smithing, for example.
- It starts simply, and opens up quickly to be much more complicated than it initially seems
- There are hundreds of different items in the game
- It's not exponential - which is why most idle games get boring quickly; it's pretty much linear progression
- You character has gear just like an MMO character
- Gear items can be for combat or skill-focused
- You can play actively and try to achieve small goals, or leave it running for a day to amass resources
- Can be played on Steam, in a browser, on your phone or iPad all with cloud save
- 2 expansions released with lots of extra stuff (particularly enjoying cartography, which makes the game feel more like a real game and less like a spreadsheet)
Cons
- There is no sound, at all. I understand not wanting skill sound effects, because a sound effect every 2 seconds would get annoying fast, but there should be UI sounds. It feels dead without that
- Luckily there's a wiki, because there is zero information in the game about where to find things like specific enemies or items you need