Despite their name, the best idle games typically offer a nice amount of player choice. Whether you’re deciding how best to apply your resources in Cookie Clicker or laying out your route in Loop Hero, smart clicker design uses the automated elements to enhance the overall experience. Bringing together those concepts with a top-down combat style reminiscent of Vampire Survivors, Nomad Idle has just landed on Steam, and it’s already caught my eye with its surprisingly deep design.
Nomad Idle is a new indie game from developer The Fox Knocks, and it’s a follow-up to the studio’s debut release Nomad Survival, which fell much more into the traditional Vampire Survivors mold. As an idle game, you can sit and watch your character move and attack enemies without doing anything, although you have the option to manually activate character-specific skills and abilities to speed up your progress or push past tougher challenges in true clicker fashion.
Don’t mistake that initial simplicity for a lack of depth, however. As soon as you level up, you’ll be able to start distributing points across seven distinct stats, each of which offers a selection of benefits. Leveling dexterity will boost your cooldown reduction, projectile speed, and damage-over-time effects, for example, while putting points into wisdom will increase your mana, mana regeneration, and the damage dealt by your summons.
Beyond that, you can find equipment out in the field, or use materials farmed from enemies to begin crafting your own custom gear. These pieces can then be further upgraded over time. From there, you can also unlock and use additional passive skills that will automatically trigger in battle, and of course there’s even the aforementioned option to learn how to summon or recruit other creatures to fight by your side.
Unlike some clicker games, The Fox Knocks says Nomad Idle isn’t designed to be endless – play long enough and you’ll eventually reach its conclusion. Along the way, however, there are some really fun discoveries to be made. I don’t want to give too much away, but I really like the contemplative thoughts that begin to sneak out of your character’s brain as the deaths start to pile up.
Nomad Idle is out now on Steam, with a 10% launch discount meaning you’ll pay $8.99 / £7.65 if you buy it before Friday April 18. Take a look here if you’re ready to bring down the hordes.
Can’t escape the call of loot? The best games like Diablo are packed to the brim with legendary items and magical materials to snag. If you’d rather just see how long you can last, try one of the best survival games instead.
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