As someone who has played RuneScape on and off for many years but who never really liked combat and other activity-intense gameplay elements, it’s nice to see a game that combines many elements of nostalgia from RS with all of the laziness I enjoy of being idle.
With that being said, the Steam version of the game is not required to play the game. Having it does have a few benefits over playing without however.
- The game runs at full speed while minimized. Many, if not all, modern browsers save resources by slowing down or in some cases stopping tabs or windows running in the background. For many web pages this is a good thing, but for a game such as Melvor Idle it results in calculations and timers taking longer than they should resulting in lower XP, GP, resources, etc. per hour.
- Steam keeps track of time played. One of the nicest things Steam does is track playtime. If you keep Melvor Idle open 24/7 like some people, it can very quickly grow to be your most played game and we all like seeing big numbers on things.
- You support the developer. The game is made by a single developer and purchasing the game helps support him for the time and effort that has been put into the game itself. Since the game has no microtransactions, the only direct monetary support is in the form of purchases of the game on Steam and ad-free versions purchased on the app stores along with Patreon.
- The Steam version is ad-free. The Steam version of the game has no ads. Simple.
- Steam has achievements and trading cards. While knowing you achieved something and being able to see it yourself is great, achievements and badges let you show off to your friends. None of them have 100% item log completion do they?
If you haven’t played the game yet and would like to try it out, you can do so for free but with some minor ads on the website. After playing it and seeing if you enjoy it, I highly suggest the Steam version if you do.
The game itself
This is a list of a few of the pros and cons of this game over other idle/incremental games I have played. As of writing, the game is currently in ALPHA v0.19.1 so things are subject to change.
Pros
- Nostalgia/familiarity. While not everyone has played RuneScape in the past (or present), there were many who did and this game was originally inspired by it. Since then it has branched off, adding monsters, items, and its own story not found in RuneScape but all the skills are familiar and many of the mechanics are similar enough that you don’t need to try to work them out from scratch if you’ve played RuneScape.
- No microtransactions. I mentioned it briefly in the benefits of the Steam version, but this game as a whole has no microtransactions. If you want to advance you need to play the game instead of paying money.
Zitat:
Malcs:
Unlike other Idle games, I believe everyone who plays should be on an even playing field. This promise will be kept throughout the entire Development of Melvor Idle.
- The wiki. The wiki contains all the information about the game from max hit of monsters to XP/s and GP/s of each individual tree you can cut down. If you need to check some number, the odds of it being on the wiki is nearly 100%.
- Elegant user interface. The game has a user interface that is easy to understand and nice to look at. It offers options to toggle dark mode, commas in numbers, formatting of numbers (1,000K vs 1M) along with many other quality of life interface features that you can choose to use or not depending on your preferences.
- Multiple playstyles. The game offers 3 different officially supported playstyles and the community has created many of their own to change the challenge in varying ways. Standard mode is the goto for your first playthrough since it has no limitations, no special rules applied, and is overall the most laid-back. Hardcore mode is similar to Standard except you get a single life, limited bank slots, and a more punishing combat triangle. Adventure mode adds a whole new challenge by locking skills behind a gold cost along with limiting how high a skill can get by capping it at your current combat level. With this, you need to plan how you will advance to maximize your gains while also keeping up with combat so you can push skills higher and gaining money to unlock more skills to train. Some players have created their own limitations such as combat only, 12 bank slots, only gaining xp in a single skill until it’s 99, and many more.
- Cross-platform. The game has Cloud saving to make it simple to load it on your computer when you are at it, play on your phone while in bed when you should be asleep, and check in on it while in class on your laptop.
- Content isn’t wasted. Everything you do has some benefit to it. There’s the obvious benefit of watching your level increase, but Mastery adds a reason to increase past level 99 even on skills that have no normal benefit beyond that. Firemaking is the notable one since after level 99 the only thing you get from it is coal in exchange for logs. However since the Mastery benefits of Firemaking are to increase your global mastery XP gain, it is still useful to train beyond level 99 to assist with other skills in the long term.
- Active development. This is both a pro and a con, but Malcs, the developer, is actively adding new content and fixing bugs as they come up. He engages with the community on Discord and Reddit to see what the user base is thinking as well as respond to questions regarding the game.
Cons
- Active development. This is both a pro and a con, but as the game is still in Early Access, there will be bugs. The majority of bugs get caught and fixed on the test servers before any major release, but some will always slip through. Most of them are minor issues but some can be quite bad. They do get patched quickly when they appear, but if you’re in the select few who stumble upon a bad bug it might take some work to get things working again. Luckily, Malcs or others tend to assist with getting things back to normal when they can.
- No massive numbers. While the game as a whole is designed intentionally to not use the massive numbers most incremental games use, there is something nice about seeing those numbers so large in other games. You’ll find it difficult to get to or beyond a few billion GP until very late game when you start having less to spend it on.
- Requires internet to load. Since the game is entirely web based, it needs an internet connection to load. Once loaded it is possible to continue playing offline however.
Melvor Idle is a game that I have enjoyed playing for around 8 months as of writing this and will hopefully continue to enjoy for a while. The game can be played for free as an Apple or Android app along with on the website but if you would like an ad-free version that runs at full speed while minimized and also help support the developer, I highly suggest getting the game on Steam. For the same price as purchasing the game on Steam, you can instead subscribe for a month to the $10 tier of Patreon to get a Steam code as well as an ad-free code to either the Apple or Android app. Getting it through Patreon saves you money (in the sense of getting the paid version of the app as an additional benefit), supports the developer more directly, and gets you a month of access to the Patreon-only perks on Discord.
