With the trend of new incremental games coming out, it's been difficult for gamers to find titles that bring worthwhile ideas to the genre, or sometimes to even tell them apart. Some are barely-coded "watch the numbers get bigger" examples, while other developers have been lunging for some flashy gimmick to vie for your attention in an effort to get their own title to stand out from the rest. Pray don't toy with our affections, good sir! And then along comes a title like Idle Village. Unity-savvy up-and-comer Supercluster just goes ahead and bolts on everything he can find to the experience, unabashedly throwing the kitchen sink at the game and not even satisfied until the thing releases a pile of adorable puppies into the room from a hidden vent and checks your e-mail for you at regular intervals. If all that sounds a bit on the hyperbolic side, take a gander at the list of features and decide for yourself. A full-fledged CG model of your village, complete with day and night cycles, that accurately depicts the growth and development of your village — and which you can enter as a player. The ability to gain a fourth of some of your resources, and all of the rest, while you're offline and while the game isn't even loaded. A sophisticated and intricate system of buildings to research that produce everything from potatoes to shrimp and lanternfish to jewelry, carrots and deer and bear meat. An employment system, where you delegate your growing body of villagers to produce these various resources, and a market where you can sell them all for gold and buy new resources for your town. A smithy, where you can craft a diverse arsenal of weaponry, and a recent addition to automate your production. All this and more, from a title still very actively being developed, has put Idle Village firmly on the map.
Idle Villages' feature-rich presentation means there's a lot of data to present in a small visual area, and will quickly have you longing for a fullscreen option. Instead, extensive use of the scroll-wheel is applied to allow you to cycle through much of the data and options, and for the moment at least some areas of text overlap others. If you're getting reports or options that seem cut off or incomplete, try hovering your mouse over that bit and using the scroll-wheel. You'll start off by getting Woodcutters and Stone Mines that will produce the raw materials needed to build more buildings, and later adding in Metal Mines. You'll first use the Wood and Stone garnered to build Farms and Wells, which will supply the Food and Water needs for your villagers to grow. Everything's available from the clearly-presented buttons at the top, but you can also use the number keys to shortcut your way through these menus. [0] or [Tab] will take you into Player Mode, where you can use the mouse to look around and the [WASD] keys to move. There isn't much to do in Villager Mode yet, although you can encounter other villagers as they go about their business. The 3D models are stock, lending a certain macabre, Twilight Zone effect at the moment, but this feature is still a very new implementation. You can sprint with [Shift] and teleport back home with [U], but for now you can't do anything in Player Mode but move around and look at things. You can play Idle Villages without Player Mode by loading it in Low Performance Mode. The game will autosave for you all on its own throughout.
Is Idle Village's kitchen sink formula enough to enable it to stand out in the already-crowded incremental genre? For all its myriad of craftable items, its 3D modelling, its new gameplay mechanics, Idle Village doesn't seem to have quite managed to bring them all together in a form that provides a lot of gameplay value... yet. You can craft weapons, you can produce veggies in your garden, but all you can do with them at the moment is sell them for gold at the Market. Doubtless Supercluster has an overall vision for the game and is working behind the scenes to pull all the elements together into a cohesive gameplay experience — despite a few player comments, the developer's implementation of player suggestions has been fairly responsive, from recently adding other NPC villagers to autoproduction options available at the Smithy. Doubtless applying all these gameplay elements in some form that meaningfully improves the state of your village is on the way shortly. It would be nice for example to have the quality of life you've provided for your villagers with all the manufactured goods to show up in a Satisfaction Rating that had some in-game effect, or to have research options for advanced merchandise buildings unlock only after you've provided a certain amount of the more basic goods, in keeping with the resource management direction Idle Village has been taking. What happens next is for Supercluster to say for sure, but with all these components and a solid platform in which to apply them it's certainly going to be a delight finding out.
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are there instructions on how to play?? I am sorry to be dense but I can't do anything except access the tabs, I don't know how to build and in hitting a couple keys (I think it was ctrl and shift) just to see what happened it said I time traveled and would have to delete my game in order to have high scores again....What the?????
Press '0' on the keyboard to switch between first person and building mode. looks like if you ever load the game, even if you just press back to menu, it will think you "traveled" and you get that message.
It would be nice if the "time travel" issue could be fixed, or if the error message would eventually disappear. Otherwise, it's quite an interesting sim with loads of options.
The "time travel" message makes this game absolutely unplayable. Too bad, otherwise it was very fun.
Agreed. I literally cannot read some of the tabs because I've "time traveled" (but, but, aren't we always traveling through time?)
I don't care if I have time traveled. I have a life ya know, I move around. Can you just move the stupid message so I can finish playing?
Fun game, but like others have pointed out, the time travel issue (bug?) is a game killer. Closing out of the game and loading it back up later should not count as cheating.
Got the same time travel bug. 0/10.
No time travel bug (yet), but having to sit around and wait for knowledge, with no way to make it go faster once you reach max upgrade, just seems like a cheap way to add difficulty.
I guess I let it run for 4 or 5 days so I can get all the knowledge upgrades... and then what?
It only took me a couple hours to research all my buildings. Make sure you pump your school, and buy the Academy as soon as you can. After that, just continue to sell whatever you're producing, and use the gold to buy materials to continue to level the school/academy.
The time travel bug makes it impossible to go into player mode, so I don't know whether this game would be worth playing or not.
Hi guys. I've alerted the developer to the problem and am awaiting a fix for this. Thanks for your patience.
neo1973,
Those research points can also be used to boost your resource production, thanks to a recent update. Check your subtabs in your Research menu. =)
So I've been playing a little while, and this is going to sound silly, but, bug aside, I'm not seeing the idle factor.
Technically, it's very well done. I really think the idea of walking around in my "city" is one of the neatest things I've seen in a while. It's polished and runs well (expect for the...you know).
But with most of the good idlers, the bait is usually "Just build 1,000 more of this thing and you'll get that thing which is so much more interesting." There's always something just around the corner to keep you going.
I'm not seeing it here. I seem to have built all the buildings I can. I can increase resource production only for the sake of increasing resource production. I can level up my buildings which allows me...to have leveled up buildings. It's just watching numbers go up for their own sake, instead of working towards something (like, say, in Cookie Clicker's
Grandmapocalypse
).
I'm sure there's more. The game hints at somewhere you can make battle axes and such, but I don't know how to get there. And that's the problem here, I think: it's just not tempting or teasing me with the next neat thing I can get. I'm just watching numbers increase and wonder if anything's going to happen.
Well, I got the academy and that definitely sped up the knowledge points.
My sticking point now is population. I can't seem to get enough people, and I'm not sure the mechanic that controls it. I have (seemingly) plenty of food and water, so I'm not sure why my population is growing at a crawl.
neo1973,
If you've got enough Food and Water, your population limiters are
housing and time.
argyblarg,
Yes, that's kind of the direction I was writing in when I mentioned that it had a lot of great gameplay elements, but currently lacked a means of bringing them together in a way that enhances the gameplay experience. Of course Supercluster's been tacking and bolting new stuff on with verve, so he may well have a blueprint in mind that we can't see. I wanted to let our readers in on the fun as early as possible... which often means not everything's been implemented yet. But we'll be here to watch and participate as it emerges!
Oh, and you can build weapons
with your Blacksmith Points over at the Smith's. You get those Blacksmith Points by
employing your citizens as Blacksmiths.
Food and water production. From what I can tell you must have the same amount of food and water as your population to add 1 more person to your population if you have space for more villagers. If you have 5 you will need 5 food and 5 water to get the 6 villager. To get to 7 you will need 6 food and water. to get from 40 to 41 villagers you will need 40 food and water.
Can't i turn that music off??
fuzzyface, that threw me too at first. Settings > Sound > Mute from the screen you get just as the game has loaded.
Satori, did you get an answer from the developer?
I really have the feeling this game would deserve a better rating with just some improvements.
Nothing yet, Jeff. I agree, people would be enjoying this a lot more if not for this one bug.
Heh. I ran into the time travel thing as well. I also hit *another* bug, or at the very least an as-yet-unimplemented feature: Buying some businesses (Bakery, for example) failed to open an option in the building menu for the building. Hatmakers and Hunting Lodge worked, though. Didn't bother setting up a blacksmith.
As tempted as I am to try this game right now I think I'll hold off and wait and see what becomes of it.
I have one concern though.
A lot of idle games can become resource hogs once the numbers start becoming letters, if you catch my meaning. With all the extra features nailed on and a 3D engine to boot how have people been finding performance levels thus far?
I have updated our file for Idle Village with the newest one from the developer, which should hopefully fix the bugs players have encountered!
I just started playing yesterday. No bugs so far and it does run if you leave and come back.
Enjoying it so far... I think bugs have been fixed.
I am enjoying the game again.
Blacksmithing
You have to go to research and research blacksmith before you can you it.
You then a merchant building, employees and last but not least you have to use the blacksmith tab under the employment tab. Guess what? Love making weapons, but don't want to click, then you can auto you production on your favorites.
Any tips on the best strategies for making money?
There have been new updates.
I have been playing the game on Kongregate as noted by the developer.
What is the best idle game ever?
One you can close and when you come back it is like you never closed it.
This game now continues to gain resources when you are gone. I don't know if it did that before, but it did it today. Now since I am not around to upgrade it is the earned amount of resources for what I have, but come on that is pretty awesome. Seeing a few hundred thousand in resources when you come back and you had only just started the game, played for an hour and then left it until the next day.
I don't know about you, but a lot of these idle clicker games start to take up a lot of resources after you get them higher and higher in the numbers, so you don't want to tend to keep the game playing. However with this come back later and still benefit it makes you want to still play.
Be an idle clicker and come back later or be more interactive upgrading and checking on your stats. The key is to do a bit a both and then you can get the most out of the game.
If you have not already come back, then give this game another chance.
Play now. Come back tomorrow. Discover uber resources.
It always computed resources earned while you are away (although there was a bug associated with it for a while).
A number of idlers do that, as well.
Has anything been added, or is it still "just watch numbers go up to see them go up"?
I am not sure if anything was added. I had played it for just such a short while because of the unplayable bug it had.
I had just realized myself that it had that feature, but it seemed like other people were not getting it. Now that the bug is fixed I had time to notice those few things about the game.
Having a bit of a time getting into player mode.
Almost seems like things went backwards.
16 hours later
I have less metal.
2,000,000 wood and I am at (+1,032,009)
Which really does not add up. Yesterday it was 400 million
5047 items
Only about 100 extra population with (+211) on food and water
15 knowledge school level 17, academy level 11
Also it says I have been only playing for 5 hours 9 minutes and I know that for a few days in a row I had it open all day.
There must have been an update, it just seems broken today. It was doing so well, I am not sure I am going to continue to play.
Now today I go one and say oh there is my billion I was looking for yesterday.
I am not sure if it caught up today with what I missed yesterday or if it is just todays earnings, but at least I have my billion.
Anyone see any updates or did we all quit?
Also as the numbers get higher the game uses more CPU and slows down the game.
Update