Bloobs Adventure Idle

I want to like this game, I really do. Melvor Idle, another Runescape-inspired idle game, is probably my favorite of the entire idle/incremental genre. I was hoping to find the same kind of interlocking skill dependencies, cross-skill buffs, monster drops providing skill buffs, skills unlocking new ways to progress, etc. As it is, the main skill progression just feels like needless filler. The prestige system is virtually the only satisfying power increment, and it's multiple days per skill per prestige. There isn't content past the second prestige at this point, which means you're spending weeks of same-y grinding for very little experienced improvement. I feel pretty much just as strong at level 150 of a skill as I did at level 1. Technically I can mine or smelt or move to new places or hit slightly harder or take slightly less damage but... I don't feel like I care or like it matters. There's not really anything that I -want- to do that I need a higher level to achieve. No goals other than a larger number.

In my favorite idle games, there is something just out of reach that will let me do something that I can't do right now. Some efficiency, some item, some buff, something. Victor Frankel famously said (with a slight paraphrase) "Thus it can be seen that [good idle game design] is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still out to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should be." This game is cozy, but without a motivational drive or engine.

Edit for examples: Right now the golden (prestige-focused) artifact for each gathering skill is locked behind an extreme-RNG drop obtained by using that skill. It would be super easy to put a lvl 1-33 item behind a level 100 melee-required boss, an upgrade item behind a level 100 magic-only boss that increases it to a 1-66 item and another upgrade item behind a range-only boss that ups it to level 1-100. Let me set up permanent buffs at the homestead, but have to choose one of X buffs at a time. Let me forge something that improves my crafting and craft something that improves my fishing and fish a chest that has a chance to drop an item that buffs my thieving and thieve something that can boost my woodcutting etc.

Another major challenge is that all of the information in the game is totally opaque. I have no idea what, for example, thieving from a fisherman offers me. Yes, I can look it up in the wiki (and I get the "authenticity" to RC of that design), but that pulls me out of the game. There's already an in-game codex that contains that information. Locking it behind tens of thousands of steals seems unnecessary. By the time I'm that far in, I don't need a codex. Once I've looted an item, let that unlock my "knowledge" that the item can be looted. Let the percent drop rate be unveiled by the current system, but do let me know that there are "rare, exciting" drops to be had before ten thousand repeats of the same action. That motivates me to do the thing.

The concept sounds fine, the reviews are glowing, but the reality at this point is that the game is a large puddle that is very, very shallow. To the point that there is no game here at all.

All incrementals are derivative, sure, but the ingredient that makes an incremental fun to play is meaningful progression, and the agency of your path to said progression. There's none of it here.

The release version contains a challenge system that is frankly a great example of the wideness and shallowness of this puddle. The UI is unwieldy to the point of feeling like it's a deliberate choice to pad content. And finishing challenges gives you points that you can use to either make challenges less of an absolute chore, or destroy any semblance of a meaningful in-game economy. You can use challenge points, which are extremely easy to get, to buy coins at a rate that makes selling things absolutely useless. So the coins in this game might as well not exist, just replace them with challenge points and the end result is the same.

The map is huge, but adds nothing. There's no exploration, there's no point to any of it, it's just an added time sink for moving to one node to another. Again, wide just for the sake of being wide, with no depth at all.

I appreciate the developer is active, and seemingly it is a passion project. But the reviews should be balanced - and currently they are glowing, and I for one don't get why - not even a bit.

With all respect and wishes of continued success to the developer, I can't recommend a game that is designed poorly compared to many free incrementals that come out basically weekly, and asking 8 bucks for it.

Bloobs Adventure Idle is a game that until recently I enjoyed. It isn't sophisticated or requires constant micromanaging like some idler/clicker games I've played. It's a simple, relaxing game that could be seen as a homage to Runescape, as the two have a lot in common, which other commenters have mentioned.

The game currently has 23 skills and multiple locations that are slightly different enough to feel unique and offljne gain that saves up to 36 hours (more if you prestige Dexterity), the downside is that the only way to use it is lo have the game open. Bloobs Adventure has a Beastiary for the monsters, item Compendium for all items, and even a Thief's Log for the stalls and chests for the Thieving skill. The Rainbow Bloob (next to the bank) sells cosmetic outfits and the Stats board shows the stats for most skills, there's a lot of detail for certain parts of the game, which is great, this however brings me to the new skill, Soulblinding.

Soulbinding is a recent update in which skills and (some?) monsters give souls (which as of this review aren't currently added to the Beastiary). Souls are akin to pets in that they give bonuses. Souls are beyond extremely rare, playing for tens of hours and still not getting one of the 129 souls (25 of the 154 can be bought), the souls gotten from skilling/killing give bonuses stats, whereas the ones bought are simply cosmetic. The rarity of souls will most likely be improved as it's a new update and the developer is active, but even if a .0 is taken away, making the souls ten times more common, that's still over 1k hours to get roughly 100 of them.

I feel conflicted giving this game a negative review after the amount of time and enjoyment this game gave me. But for me, the idler/clicker genre are played to be fully completed, the new update has added thousands and thousands of hours to fully complete all achievements in this game, which is simply unfair.
After spending over 100 hours since the update came out, I've gotten a total of one soul, this has made me realise that getting the achievement that requires 100 souls would take (for me, at least) a possible time of 10,000 hours, which is an absurd amount of time to complete any game, even an idler. Fortunately you can buy 25 souls reducing the number required from 100 to 75. I understand that souls are extremely rare because you're meant to fully play the game to get them, which leads me to another problem, almost everything stops at level 100 (with the exception of Strength, Magic, and Range which still boost damage, as well as Beastmastery as that currently has two monsters that require over level 100 to fight) so getting prestiges to level 2, or 5, or even 10 with skills that stop at 100 feels pointless.

It seems that the developer wants people to fully complete the game in order to get all souls, which on its own is fine, most idle games have achievements that can only be required once you've gotten to the end-game, but since all skills (except the four mentioned earlier) stop at 100, forcing people to go above and beyond just for souls seems kind of cruel, the bonuses gotten from prestiging are minimal for the time it takes to unlock. Getting 10 prestige in Imbuing (Which takes billions of EXP) for 30% instant Imbue chance is just terrible and getting that far will take literally hundreds of hours, most likely going in to the 1000s.

The update has made me realise that the developer(s) is going too far too quickly, the game has been out for almost a year, but it already has a level cap of 1,000 but nothing above 100 for 22 of the 23 skills. It's not a bad game, as I mentioned earlier I quite enjoy it, but the sheer repetitiveness towards the later parts of the game where there's nothing but mindless grinding gets tiresome.