Clicker Conquest

At first the game seems pretty cool, like you're going to unlock systems and incremental upgrades and progressive upgrades. But then: Nothing. There is nothing deeper, just click for like 6 hours with no interesting systems to engage with. Very repetitive. No emergent game play systems.

This game looked fun. After a bit though, it got boring, and not fun as a clicker. I like clicker/idle games, but this just doesn't scratch the itch.

You are a king who must mine gold to grow your kingdom and stop enemies from taking your rock, which apparently comes with an endless supply of gold. All you have to do is mash a button on the rock and occasionally click on enemies that emerge from four caves and move toward it. Defeated enemies drop experience, which eventually grants skill points you can spend later. Although it is a clicker game, there is some sense of threat. In addition to fighting enemies, you must cover production costs at the end of each day. The length of the day is shown by a bar at the top of the screen that steadily decreases. During the first few days, nothing happens if you fail to mine enough gold, but each failed day lowers the people’s patience. Once their patience runs out, the game ends and you have to start over. Mining enough gold each day is fairly easy, and failure usually happens only if you choose to do nothing. When the day ends, you return to the castle to handle a random event. You receive a letter describing a situation that requires your attention and must choose between two options. One costs money, while the other may anger the people, grant you a reward, take something away from you, or something else. More importantly, the castle houses four advisers on whom you can spend gold to gain upgrades. One is largely useless if you play properly, as she only restores some of the people’s favor in exchange for coins. Another is the jester, who does not require money but allows you to spend skill points on personal upgrades such as increased damage per click, more gold per click, or a chance for extra rewards per kill. Each upgrade has a purchase limit. Then there is the general, who lets you hire units to improve efficiency. There are four units in total. Only the miner automatically gathers gold, while the sweeper collects experience points. The other two units, the wizard and the archer, defend the rock by attacking approaching enemies. Each unit can be upgraded to improve its performance, such as increasing mining speed for miners or attack speed for archers. However, upgrades significantly raise operating costs. In many cases, the improvement is so minor that it does not justify the higher daily expenses. The final adviser is the economy minister, who constructs various structures in exchange for gold. There are only a few options, but each provides passive benefits. For example, the bazaar generates money at the end of each day and increases public happiness. A training center boosts unit damage, another building generates skill points, and the church allows you to worship a god who grants special powers. Unfortunately, the gameplay loop becomes repetitive quite quickly. The upgrades are limited, unremarkable, and do little to meaningfully change the experience. The game demands excessive manual clicking to the point that using an auto clicker feels almost necessary. The achievement design is also frustrating. One achievement requires surviving 100 days, which becomes tedious since you will have unlocked all upgrades long before reaching that milestone. Even worse are the achievements tied to event letters. Some events span multiple days, and choosing the wrong option can permanently lock you out of earning certain achievements. Leaving the game running in the background is not viable because it lacks a borderless mode. The game pauses when you switch to another window. You also cannot quickly skip through days, as you must return to the castle to deal with repeating letters, though these do not include achievement related events.