Hey friends! WARNING: Prototype inside. We’ve finished our first Project BuildyCrafty prototype, and you can test it out now! This week, we’ll touch on what this game is and how it was conceived. Let’s dig in.
How Am I Doing?
I’m doing stellar! Aside from a very annoying recurring cold, I’ve had a great week. It was my birthday, and I had many thoughtful gifts and calls, as well as some quality time with friends. Other than that, the hype has caught up with me, and I’ve been thoroughly addicted to Balatro. I knew I would be hooked as soon as I tried it, but I didn’t think it would have as much charm as it does.
What Am I Doing?
Last week, in the Method, I talked about working on several prototypes to test out our concepts. Well, we finished the first one! Introducing Loopy Folk, a silly idle game about little guys collecting trash.
Tend to the Loopy Folk in this chill idle game. Strategically place buildings and plants along the path, collect resources and sacrifice them to the HOLE. Behold as the barren wasteland blossom into a lush forest.
Essentially, these little guys continuously walk around in a circle and pick up trash and whatever else they run into and chuck it in a big hole. You can then use that as resources to build around the path to make your guys go faster, spawn more of them, and improve resource-gathering efficiency.
Builds
Want to try it out? You can! The current state of the prototype is very simplistic: placeholder art, a small number of buildings and upgrades, and there are still a few bugs in there too. Here are the builds:
If you try it out, we’d love to know the following things:
- Do you usually enjoy playing idle games?
- Do you usually enjoy playing wholesome games?
- Would a polished + beautiful + more features version of this game compel you? (See concept art above.)
- If not, what would you change about it for you to want to play it?
- If you managed to finish a session, did you want to continue playing on the same map or start over on a new one?
If you’d be so kind, you can send that and any other feedback you might have to contact@newtonarrative.com or join our Discord server. We’re using this prototype to gauge the direction we want to take, so every single opinion is very much appreciated!
Why Am I Doing? (this)
Why did we pick idle games as one of the genres to explore? Originally, I had no interest in idle games whatsoever. I’ve played some of them back in the browser games days, sure, but it never grabbed me as a particularly fun genre to design on.
While doing marketing research, however, we found out that the idle, clicker and incremental genres have been steady sellers for more than a decade now. There are three major factors to this. The first is the price point. Idle games tend to cost between 2 and 5 euros. It’s the price of a coffee for potentially hours of small dopamine hits.
The second factor is development cost. Idle games tend to be one-person operations because it’s a relatively easy genre to program, and player expectations for beautiful art are minimal. The third factor is that people have gradually become more used to parallel stimulation. A lot of people I know work with a podcast on, a vlog on their second monitor, or an idle game in the background to check back on every few minutes.
Gap in the Market
While playing some idle games, I have to admit that there’s a lot more depth to them than I initially thought. Good systems and economy design are essential, and finding the right balance is a delicate exercise in those fields of game design. We also noticed how too many idle games lack beautiful art, fun theming, and engaging active gameplay.
While brainstorming, Jonas and I talked a lot about Loop Hero. That’s not an idle game, but it’s so close to it that I think it would benefit from stripping away some of the active elements in favor of idle ones. I also thoroughly believed that the Loop Hero formula would become an instant target for clones, spinning it off into a whole new genre. It never did, however. The initial idea for Loopy Folk started there: a wholesome Loop Hero-inspired game where you have a parade of little guys.
So that’s the niche we’re trying to fill: a polished, silly idle game that’s pleasing to look at. We’ve phased in and out of the wholesome idle game genre as well, but it seems like that’s a whole other beast. We’ve yet to answer which of these two directions is the right one to take, so we can really use your help by playing the prototype!
For now, on to the next. Here’s a little teaser for you:
