Tap Adventure: Time Travel
jdodson gives this a "Meh" on the Ghost Scale
It’s not amazing, it’s not bad. This is ok but you may want to choose another title.
jdodson gives this a "Meh" on the Ghost Scale
It’s not amazing, it’s not bad. This is ok but you may want to choose another title.
Clicker games are a genre that I might always have a few minutes for. I don't play clicker games very long but for a brief couple of days they are something I can't stop playing. It all started with Cookie Clicker, the absolute best Clicker game i've ever played. Then came the Steam Summer Sale with the Steam Adventure which was a crazy robot friend adventure that was something I played for entirety of that sale period. I tried my hand at AdVenture Capitalist and enjoyed that for a brief stint and my most recent clicker story is of a game brand new to Steam called Tap Adventure: Time Travel. Is it as good as Cookie Clicker? Nope. But it's a pretty fun free to play...
OK I had no clue you liked this genre, and that you were the person I needed to ask this question: why are these games a thing?
I'm being incredibly careful in this comment not to be a negative Norman, so I'm sorry if it feels like I'm over-defending myself.
Please note that I am not disparaging the clicker/tapper games at all. I just don't get them. I've tried Cookie Clicker and two iOS games. I adore the Katamari games and one came out for iOS called Tap My Katamari so I had to try it.
But I just don't get it. I get about 30 minutes in at most, and that's just to give it a chance to grab me, because a few seconds in and it already doesn't feel like a game. That's fine, not all genres are for everyone and this one definitely isn't for me but I'm legitimately curious about what the appeal is for those who like it.
Again, this comes off like I'm dropping a deuce on the genre but that's not what it's about. Some people can't get into RTS games, some people can't get into RPGs, and that's fine. I'm not trying to be negative and infect everything with my negativity. I'm legitimately curious.
> why are these games a thing?
In brief chunks they are like a distilled version of unmitigated progression. It feels like, for a day or so, you can quickly just level up quickly and such and it's fun to see where that goes. THEY GET OLD WAY FAST THOUGH but again, for that brief period it's all fun grind.
Really though for a day or so it's like the craziest slot machine high and I can't stop. Then when it hits me what's happening i'm like "what am I doing" and then I stop. But for a time, it's a crazy fun time.
Hope that helps.
> Tap My Katamari
Someone should win an award for that name.
I tapped to end that video. Even the music made me sleepy. Zzzz
Jon, yeah that's kinda the answer I expected. I guess I'm just missing the drive necessary for them! I've always disliked games where I feel like progression exists for the sake of progressing and nothing else.
There was a guy from the Diablo 3 dev team defending why they nerfed the amount of gold you get from busting pottery. He referenced playtesting research where if you take a game that has been well received and then put a big button somewhere that says "click me for gold/points/xp/whatever," people will click it a few times and then go on to play the rest of the game and find it less rewarding, so they keep clicking the button and come out with the impression that the game is boring.
It's interesting because these games just take the gameplay out entirely and give you that button and the progression around clicking it more efficiently, and made something that beats that research the Blizzard dev cited.
Huh. Yeah. Can't disagree there because I don't really stay interested for long with clickers.
I get into clickers for short bursts. It's the reverse engineering the progression curve that catches my fancy. I.e. that's the gameplay for me, figuring out how to min/max. Once that's done, I'm bored. There is also some attraction to seeing all the various units in the game also (if there are fun animations/sfx)
But I do that with a lot of genres -- it's the game dev in me. I did it with several early facebook games (yes, I had spreadsheets for Farmville and for Vampire Wars) and still do it in a lot of other games. I just like separating out the mechanics and see how they balanced the set :)
I also find more abstract games fun. For example Parameters is a lot of fun to play at least once (it's an abstract rpg) http://nekogames.jp/g.html?gid=PRM