What Is an Idle RPG? From Clicker and Incremental Games to Today
Idle RPGs grow your character while you're away. Origins in Progress Quest and Cookie Clicker, subgenres, key titles, and design points like prestige.
An idle RPG is a game in which your character fights and grows on its own while the game is left running, or even while it's turned off. The player drops in now and then to collect accumulated rewards, chooses what to upgrade, and leaves again. In the Korean mobile market, games with "키우기" ("growing" or "raising") in the title are often used almost as a name for this genre.
In this post, we cover what idle games are, where they started, how they branch out, and which titles define them. We then look at design points for sustaining the "fun of watching numbers grow" over a long time, and at who this genre suits. For the overall history of RPGs, see The History of RPGs, and for a comparison with other branches of RPGs, see RPG Subgenres Explained.
Definition and Core Appeal of Idle RPGs
In English, idle games fall under the broader name "incremental game." These are games in which you gradually accumulate in-game resources through repeated actions or automation and use those resources to speed up your growth. When the emphasis is on tapping the screen continuously, they are called clicker games; when the emphasis is on automation that progresses even when you let go, they are called idle games. Many games have both elements.
The idle RPG dresses this structure in the form of an RPG. It has RPG elements such as hunting, levels, equipment, and companions, but combat proceeds automatically. The player's role is to decide where to invest.
The core appeal comes in three main parts.
- The thrill of explosively growing numbers: Damage that started at 1 or 10 soon grows into the millions and trillions. Numbers get so large that abbreviations like 1T (trillion) or scientific notation are used.
- Rewards when you return: You receive all the progress made while you were away at once. The feeling of "I came back and it had piled up" is what brings you back.
- Stability without failure: In most cases there is almost no losing, and you always move forward little by little. It becomes a light break that doesn't require much thinking.
Origins: A Genre That Began as Satire
Interestingly, idle games started as satire mocking other games. Anthony Pecorella, who analyzed the genre in a GDC talk, pointed to Progress Quest (2002), made by Eric Fredricksen, as the start of the genre. Progress Quest is a parody of the repetitive grinding in MMORPGs like EverQuest: once you create a character, there is nothing at all for the player to do, and the game plays itself.
Cow Clicker (2010), which Ian Bogost released on Facebook, was also a satire of social games. All you did was click a cow and wait, yet it became the first idle game to draw mainstream media attention. The web game site Kongregate was the hub of early idle games. According to Wikipedia, among the early visual idle games was one that parodied automated hunting (botting) in the Korean MMORPG MapleStory.
The genre took off in earnest with Cookie Clicker (2013), made by French developer Julien "Orteil" Thiennot. It had a simple structure: clicking a big cookie produces one cookie at a time, and buying "buildings" with the cookies you collect makes cookies automatically. Hyper Hippo's AdVenture Capitalist (2014) introduced early on offline progression, where income accumulates even while the game is closed, and monetization such as paid boosts. In the same year, Playsaurus's Clicker Heroes featured RPG-style heroes and monsters and is credited with pioneering on mobile the "prestige" (rebirth) structure, in which you reset your progress in exchange for permanent bonuses.
Subgenres and Characteristics
| Branch | Characteristics | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Clicker | Large share of collecting resources by tapping the screen directly | Early stages of Cookie Clicker |
| Management idle | Buy shops, factories, and buildings to automate income | AdVenture Capitalist |
| Idle RPG | Auto combat, hero and gear growth, stage progression | Clicker Heroes, AFK Arena |
| Incremental with an ending | Structure that ends at a certain stage, puzzle and exploration elements | Candy Box!, Universal Paperclips |
| Zero-player | Watch progress with almost no player input | Progress Quest |
| Hybrid | Idle rewards and auto progression combined with other genres | Idle rewards in collectible RPGs, auto-hunting in MMORPGs |
Landmark Titles
| Year | Game | Developer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Progress Quest | Eric Fredricksen | MMORPG parody, an RPG that plays itself |
| 2010 | Cow Clicker | Ian Bogost | Social game satire, first idle game to get media attention |
| 2013 | Cookie Clicker | Orteil (Julien Thiennot) | Popularized the genre, building and upgrade structure |
| 2014 | AdVenture Capitalist | Hyper Hippo Productions | Introduced offline progression and paid boosts |
| 2014 | Clicker Heroes | Playsaurus | Prototype of the idle RPG, prestige structure |
| 2019 | AFK Arena | Lilith Games | Mobile RPG combining hero collecting with idle rewards |
AFK Arena was followed by its sequel AFK Journey in 2024. In Korea too, idle RPGs titled "Growing ○○" (○○ 키우기) became a trend of their own in the 2020s.
Design Points
1. The Exponential Growth Curve
The backbone of an idle game is a tug-of-war between how fast costs rise and how fast income rises. Higher-tier buildings and gear become exponentially more expensive, so the time to reach the next tier stays about the same or grows gradually longer. If the curve is too steep, players feel they've hit a wall; if it's too gentle, the thrill of growth disappears.
2. Prestige (Rebirth)
This is a mechanism that, when progress starts to slow, gives permanent bonuses in exchange for starting over from the beginning. After restarting, players breeze through sections that used to take a long time and see how much stronger they've become. Choosing when to reset becomes a strategy in itself, and some games, like Realm Grinder, have multiple layers of prestige.
3. Offline Rewards and Reasons to Return
How much reward you accumulate for time away, and up to how many hours, determines the return cycle. Capping it too short is tiring; making it unlimited reduces the reason to log in.
4. Displaying Big Numbers
As numbers get bigger, how to show them on screen also becomes a design problem. You decide whether to use abbreviations like K, M, B, and T, letter-based units, or scientific notation, and sometimes use dedicated big-number data types so values don't exceed what the program can handle.
5. Balancing Active Play and Idling
A game that requires nothing of you is soon forgotten. You need to leave something to do when players come in, such as achievements, stage-by-stage goals, and short events. Pecorella has also said that many players using auto-clicker programs reveals a design flaw more than it constitutes cheating. In other words, if there's a section that demands so much clicking that your hand hurts, it needs a second look.
6. Restraint in Monetization
Idle games make heavy use of rewarded ads (double offline rewards, short boosts), paid boosts, and gacha. To last, they need to preserve the feeling that you can grow plenty even for free.
Who It's For
- People who want to pop in briefly in the gaps of a busy day to collect rewards
- People who like watching numbers grow and calculating efficiency
- People who want to play casually without the stress of losing or failing
- People who want to leave a game running on one side of the screen while doing other things
On the other hand, if you want the feel of direct control or tense competition, you may get bored quickly.
Idle RPGs Today
Idle games are a genre that has kept succeeding despite being told "it's not a game." The developer of Cookie Clicker himself has called his work a "non-game," and Pecorella described the genre as a joke-like genre that "almost doesn't want to exist," yet keeps succeeding.
Their influence actually seems greater in other genres. Real-time strategy and social games let progress continue while you're away, and some MMORPGs let you skip early stages with auto-hunting. Idle rewards in collectible RPGs and short rebirth structures in shooters and RPGs are all elements carried over from idle games. As long as mobile gaming continues, this structure of dropping in briefly and growing big looks set to keep being used across many genres.