I’m not sure why I decided to try Idle Rect, I think it was mainly because it wasn’t in early access and “premium” idle games (this one was ten dollars) intrigue me; Usually these products are free, with some monetization, and having one that just costs money upfront means that the game is complete enough and appealing enough in theory to pay for and then enjoy. I wouldn’t say that this is a scam, but it’s a deeply fundamentally flawed product that I wouldn’t have even enjoyed for free.
The main issue for me is the “Idle” part of the game, no matter what you do, Idle damage (done passively by damage generators of various tiers that you can unlock and improve) is extremely slow and limited. You need to click manually an infinite number of times, you’ll never defeat a boss (time-gated enemy where you have a limited period to deal enough damage) by relying on Idle damage alone. Why is that? I don’t want to need to click an infinite number of times. These generators should deal damage at all times and it should be potentially substantial. Even cookie clicker in 2013 had passive production that felt good!
Every other system suffers under this; I kinda like having a hundred+ different damage generators but they’re too slow. There are a few meta-progression systems stacking on top of this, but it all suffers from strange non-design decisions, having all prestige upgrades unlocked even if you have 0 idea of what they do is a weird choice, same thing with ‘income’ production systems (resource exchange, lottery, a bank with interest rates) that you have no idea what they do before unlocking them. It’s just clicking on rectangles. Even if the idling was okay, this would still feel extremely rough.
This needed more time in the oven. Stay away from Idle Rect (although I suspect you really don’t need me to tell you this!). I guess sometimes I’ll make a really bad choice where to spend my money.
