Melvor Idle

Idle games can sometimes be very comfortable to play. They don't take a lot of your time, and even without actively interacting with the game, as long as you check back every now and then and do some actions, you get a little bit of the happy brain chemicals because your numbers have gone up. I guess I was in such a state where I felt like playing an idle game, because when I saw Melvor Idle being talked about on some site, I went and gave it a try.

Melvor Idle literally takes RuneScape and turns it into an idle game. Sure, RuneScape already kind of is an idle game, so it's honestly a very familiar experience, but Melvor cuts out the tedious bits like your inventory getting full, or having to walk from place to place. It, sadly, also removes every aspect of multiplayer, and has no animations or audio whatsoever, making staring at it quite boring.
For those who don't know what RuneScape is, I'd describe Melvor as such: You have a couple dozen skills, mainly non-combat ones such as mining, smithing, woodcutting, firemaking, farming, crafting, etc., and a few combat skills. Engaging in any of the skills gives you exp in that skill and some resources, which will probably be useful in leveling some other skill, or useful in combat to defeat stronger monsters or dungeons for drops. Exp gives you new levels, which unlocks new activities in that skill. The goal is to eventually reach max level in all skills (a gargantuan task, for sure), find all rare drops, and maybe even get max mastery in all activites of all skills (which would take an insane amount of time).

There is definitely no shortage of content in Melvor, and you will not complete it any time soon. As with all idle games, the early game starts off strong, with something new unlocking every few minutes or every hour, keeping things fresh. However, after maybe a week of "playing", the game slows down to enough of a crawl that it can take a full day or longer to gain enough levels to unlock anything new. Combine that with the gameplay just being checking in on your exp bars and making sure you have enough prerequisite resources for your activities, and you're really not engaging with the game at all. For me, I soon realized that the main thing keeping me checking in each day was the sunk cost, and that prompted me to stop playing.

I don't play a lot of idle / incremental games these days, but I used to play pretty much all the big and small ones a few years ago, even multiple at the same time. I think the eventual inevitable waiting bit reveals that they don't generally have a lot of content to keep you engaged, and that has stopped me from genuinely recommending any of them. However, Melvor is probably one of the best, if not the best idle game I've played. Sure, it's piggybacking off of RuneScape's successful formula, but that's mostly irrelevant. I still can't overall recommend Melvor, but if you're someone who likes idle games, then you should definitely give Melvor a try.