Making an Idle Game From Scratch

Idle games have been the best pastime activity for many during the lockdowns and also during vacations in general. Youngsters love games and idle games, Also known as incremental games, are usually highly addictive.

Now if you are among the curious kind and want to go a step further than just playing; wanting to step in to create your own idle game, welcome aboard. Whether you want to do it for fun or make it entrepreneurial article is going to teach you in a step-by-step manner to build your own idle game from scratch.

Making an idle/ incremental game is quite easy. But making a good one is hard. Making it profitable is even harder. Making a game as good as Cookie Clicker is quite impossible. But if you start small, and you keep your game simple, you can make a pretty good idle game without much work.

Game Design

The game designing stage is the most significant. You could conceivably know this — it’s a genuinely basic confusion among non-developers — however “game design” decides how a game looks as well as how it functions. This stage is tied in with characterizing the center mechanics and client experience however much it is about visuals.

Game Loop

The core loop of a game is the sequence in which the actions of the game are arranged and that which is followed through. Idle games usually have a very simple loop. It can be like click to earn/kill/collect and then upgrade, then click more.

One should not create something more complicated than this as it will then beat the purpose of an idle game. When you earn enough or reach a certain level, players can go back to the start but with all the upgrades and powers and money. This enforces power.

Mechanics

In any other game, running, jumping, collecting and building are all the mechanical actions that will be performed by the players, and hence, these are called core mechanics. In idle games, it is usually pretty simple considering how you only need to click fast, gain resources, and then wait to upgrade yourself. Then the upgrades generate their own resources. Idle game players often tend to use a click per second test to know their clicking speed. Not just that, serious players also tend to use auto clickers that make automatic clicks.

Development Stage

The biggest challenge you have in creating a game is the initial stage, game development tools, and concepts can help you in this phase. My advice, use an engine or a framework that will save you time, keep you organized and save you money in the long run.

There are many different kinds of the idle game available on the web, but the most popular ones are incremental games and clicker games. The difference between the two is that incremental games grow in power over time while clicker games grow in number over time.

Game engines:

The two most mainstream game motors today are Unity and Unreal Engine. Both are basic among engineers and are great choices. Unreal Engine offers better illustrations, particularly in 3D. Unity’s 3D illustrations aren’t bad at all, however. Except if you’re into making an Assassin’s Creed inactive clicker with the illustrations of the first (which — for what reason would you do that?), Unity is an ideal motor for steady games.

High handling power prerequisites settle on Unreal a go-to decision for PC games as opposed to portable. Most portable game engineers would make a gradual game in Unity.

Backend:

For clicker games, you do not need a server because these are light and simple and most of the data can be stored on the player’s device or cloud. As you don’t need servers, you won’t need a backend as well.

Following are the 4 steps of Development:

1. Setting up the game loop

Before we start with the basics of making an Idle game, we will need to set up a few functions that we will need later on. The most important function is the Game loop. The game loop is something that is required in all games and it is basically the function that will run the game. Without it, the game won’t even start. So, let’s get started!

2. Setting up the coin system

The setup is very simple, and it can be done in a few minutes. This is applicable for both novice and advanced game developers. First, you need to get the Coin System core. You can get it from the Unity Asset store.

A huge feature in the coin system core is that it supports all platforms. Another good thing is that it comes with a demo scene that shows how to integrate it into the game. It is also possible to change the coin amount, at a time interval.

3. Adding a new currency

Allowing the player to passively get rewards, gradually building up their progress, but sometimes they can get a bit stale. One way to spice up your idle/incremental game is to introduce some sort of currency.

4. Adding the upgradable item system

Imagine the scenario that you are coding a game and you want to add some items that can be upgraded and are required to complete some of the in-game levels.  It’s a common requirement for games like incremental games and RPG games.

Launching The Game

After you develop your game, you need to put it out there so that people all around can download and play it. But before launching it out there, there are a whole lot of steps and it also includes testing first and then placing it globally. That brings us to the soft launch.

The last part is the soft launch. So when you will be launching your fully developed game in a certain territory only to test it. You check whether people are playing, are they coming back, or whether it is holding their attention for long.