Idle Skilling

Not a bad game but I already played way back in the day on Kongregate and then on my phone. Lost progress from kongregate to phone which was fine. But now I have to restart AGAIN to get idleon rewards? Not a fan of that. I will because I want the items but that's about it.

Very predatory gem shop in this one. If you thought idleon was bad, just wait till you see this.

TL;DR: Game's a decent choice as far as idle games go, but it has its bugs that haven't been fixed, the most recent update did not address any of them, and in fact broke the entire game in half, and there has been (as of the original publishing of this review) NO communication from the dev whatsoever on Idle Skilling. The update clearly was not adequately tested and was unfinished, and the game is just in a terrible state.



So, this is a bit of a tricky review to make, because honestly, I like this game a lot. As far as idle games go, while this one does have its issues, it's definitely one of the most expansive and interesting ones available. Yeah, it has its jank (a lot of it, actually), and yeah, you can really tell it was baby's first idle game, but all told it's historically been one of the more solid choices in terms of more expansive incremental idle games.

Note, historically. Right now... it's in a really, really bad state. For context, about a week and a half ago as of the writing of this review, Lavaflame2, the developer, released a major new update for Idle Skilling for the first time in something like 3 years, adding new content, and... Actually, nothing else, not even any highly-requested bugfixes. But, the new content seemed cool, so we shrugged that off. For about two days. At which point it became clear, well...

Let's put a bit of context to the new content. Idle Skilling, for those who don't know, is structured as a set of "skills", different screens that you can interact with in different ways, all surrounding a primary fighting mechanic, and all interacting with one another in interesting ways. Right up until the most recent update, the list of things you could do included hiring and upgrading "skillers" who generate EXP for core skills that define your stats in fighting, mining, fishing, crafting using ores and fish obtained from the previous two, manipulating souls to fuel rifts that boost other skills, a secondary fighting system, a card collection mechanic allowing you to collect, upgrade, and equip cards that can boost pretty much anything, farming crops, growing flowers, and using both crops and flowers to brew potions with permanent effects (working similarly to the mining-fishing-smithing trifecta mentioned earlier), a fully self-contained pet breeding and fighting system with a research system providing game-wide buffs, and finally a spelunking mechanic accompanied by construction that allows you to expand almost every part of the game. That's a lot of stuff!

The new update introduced one new "skill" on top of all of that- Realm, also frequently referred to as Afterlife, and while it seemed quite neat at first, some major issues very quickly reared their heads. First of all, the introduction of a secondary premium currency, Crystal Eyes, with no interaction whatsoever with the one that already existed, which isn't a great start. Second, every freemium developer's favorite, arbitrary timers. Long story short, banishing minions you create and level up gets you experience and is required in some cases in order to progress in Realm. As implemented initially, you only had 3 per day, and were not informed of this at all until you ran out. (As of right now, you're STILL not told.) As you might imagine, this ended up roadblocking a LOT of people for no good reason. But the real problem came later. See, Idle Skilling, as mentioned, has a lot of jank. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't. But outside of a couple hiccups, historically its balance has been at worst a bit wonky.

Let's just say it's painfully obvious Realm was not adequately tested, because within a day there were people breaking the entire game in half. Between ungodly massive away time boosts, gold and damage items with utterly obscene exponential curves (that only get crazier the further you get in Realm), and ridiculous coin generation that has since been shadow nerfed into the floor (which is a subject I'll get to in a moment), it goes without saying that this new update has essentially caused the entire game to fall apart. Multiple people have gone so far as to essentially brick their own games due to hitting integer overflows in multiple skills.

In other words, in the span of one update, the game has gone from a bit janky but otherwise a good experience, to an utter trainwreck, and to make matters worse, Lava has since disappeared into the ether. No official word on anything has been had with regards to Idle Skilling since the day the patch went live, with the only activity we've seen with respect to the game being a couple small, unannounced updates that nerfed the coin generation of minions in Realm into the floor. Of course, he's continued teasing things about the next update for Idleon, his other game, but it's been complete and total radio silence with respect to Idle Skilling. It's an extremely bad look.

As it stands, I cannot in good faith recommend this game given the state it's in and Lava's utter lack of communication. This latest update very obviously was not ready, and it feels like Lava is not willing to take responsibility for that.

The gameplay is fun. The numbers going up incrementally is definitely satisfying. I recommend the game, however, I do NOT recommend purchasing anything. The TLDR is that making purchases in this game is literally a scam. Here's my story...

I purchased the starter pack a 6 weeks ago. As a developer myself, I understand that bugs happen and sometimes the issue isn't always easy to fix. With the purchase of the starter pack, I did not receive any of the items that it said I would receive. Support for this is very lackluster. I could not receive a refund via Steam support. So, I emailed the developer as recommended by Steam support. I then joined the Discord for this game and was told to join the IdleOn Discord for details on how to contact the Developer. Second email was sent to the dev and this was four weeks ago.

I reached out to a mod on the Discord server who asked me to wait a week to see if the developer would be able to provide support. The reason for the delay is because a major update was recently released. A couple of weeks ago, I was told by the mod that this bug was fixed, but it appears that it /might/ only be fixed on a going forward basis. At this point, I still have not received the in-game items or a refund.

This game appears to just scam users of their money. I would think that paying customers would be a high priority. Taking well over a month to receive the items or a refund is ridiculous. Either more people are needed on support or refunds need to be available for support.