Codename Entertainment has the number 1 idle game on Kongregate—a popular site that hosts browser games. It’s called Crusaders of the Lost Idols. An idle game (also called incremental or clicker game) is a genre in which some (or nearly all) of the progress is made automatically by the computer once the player sets up the game.
The game’s developer, Eric Jordan, says, “We launched last Thursday and the response has been overwhelming! Our game quickly became the top-rated idle game on Kongregate… making it one of the highest rated idle games in the world.”
Crusaders of the Lost Idols is set in the fantasy world of Bush Whacker 2. A band of fighters takes on waves of enemies.
Following the basic pattern of other idle games, this game invites players to click on various items to get things started. Crusaders of the Lost Idols offers a brief tutorial that tells you what to click on. Once the game is set up with your fighters, the game can play itself. You can come back and check in, level up your fighters, add new fighters, and so on.
Jordan says the game was not just a project of Codename Entertainment, a Victoria, B.C., Canada studio. It was also a family project. “Both my wife and eldest son did a lot of the writing for the game and our youngest son did lots of different play tests for us.”
The idle game genre started a couple of years ago and got more popular when a game called Cookie Clicker was released. Clicker Heroes is another extremely popular idle game. In fact, Clicker Heroes is one of the most popular games on Steam, with around 38,000 people a day playing it. The popularity of these games is a bit mysterious, but Justin Davis of IGN says the games “seem perfectly tuned to provide a never-ending sense of escalation.”
Clicker Heroes is very popular on Steam, a popular game-distribution service.
