Quick Look: AdVenture Capitalist

Jeff has been talking about this game for months and I will finally see how different it is from cookie clicker.

edit: just downloaded it on steam. goddammit.

This is the end of video games.

I tried this game for a week or so. I can appreciate the occasional idle game, but this one did absolutely nothing for me. I think it's just a little too passive. It doesn't even the the illusion between you and it just being bars filling up, like something like Tap Titans has. You don't see your progress other than bigger numbers. It's just distilled a little bit too much. There's no flavor left.

The numbers, they keep going up.

I kept thinking about trying this - downloaded it on PC, but just never actually got around to it. The novelty of having a clicker on PS4 does appeal though - sometimes after I wrap up playing games with friends in the evening I want something for the last 10-15 minutes while we finish chatting before heading to bed. This might fill in that gap perfectly.

No, my friend. This is only the beginning.

I enjoyed that Breaking Bad clicker browser game a couple years ago. No need to play another clicker again, ever.

Finally the quicklook we've all been waiting for.

"It's burning my will to live as I sit here and hit this button over and over again." Put that on the advertisement.

I have avoided games like this and just listened to Jeff talk about them. Holy shit is this stupid. If there is story or some more management to stuff like this I get it. Like I played Tiny Trains for a bit and that had something there. This is just dumb tho!

Good way to put it. They need to have an illusion or something else there otherwise it's just ridiculous.

Whats the game Jeff mentions at about 26:30 that 'has an actual ending' and is 'only web based'?

I hear space plan but google throws up nothing and I am a sucker for idle games.

@ant1war: It IS spaceplan, one word.
http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/

I don't like this. I really don't like this.

Even with an "illusion", the moment to moment gameplay is bland as balls. How someone can enjoy this is beyond me. If you want to just see the numbers go up, there are a thousand different RPGs with much more engaging and interesting mechanics.

@sravankb: I'm with you. That's why I stopped playing Tiny Trains. I realized "hey, there is no actual reward here that I am enjoying as the numbers go up".

Maybe we don't deserve to leave this planet after all.

Cheat Engine for PS4 when?

Sitting down and playing it on a console is a little baffling. But, they're an adequate distraction when I'm stuck in a waiting room or have to wait on something at work. I think maybe I look for something different than Jeff, because the Katamari one is what I've been "playing" the past few weeks.

"We're hitting the buttons, and it feels good. And it feels good!"

yep, that's a clicker in a nutshell

People hate on Clash Royale here but at least it's actually a game. This is just... numbers going up. Not even that much clicking going on.

Tell me about the numbers Mason.

As a dedicated AdVenture Capitalist player on my phone, the fact that they ported it to a console is fucking insane, and probably a bad way to play. But good for them, stacking that cheddar wherever they can.

The numbers are too high, the satisfaction they talk about melts away when the numbers get so high you can't even comprehend them. Maybe their brains can comprehend those numbers, mine can't.

Quick look? More like CLICK look. HA ha ha...please help me.

+1

Seriously, play spaceplan.

What if... the numbers went down?

None of these games have really clicked with me (ok, I'll leave) except for Clicker Heroes. I've tried a couple of others and they just don't have the same hook.

Additionally, the idea of putting one on a console is absurd - I typically run these in a browser as a background process while I do other stuff. Sitting in front of a TV for this is madness.

I'm with Jeff - these things are stupid, ominous in their implications for humanity, but overall largely toothless things you tap at a few times a day while waiting for a bus. Putting it on a PS4 is both hilarious and insane. Who would play a clicker on your big screen TV, using a controller, and loading it up several times a day from your PS4?

I swear this is absolutely true: When my friend Scott and I would play WoW back in the day, we always laughed about how if you boil it down, we're essentially getting off on watching our characters' numbers go up (via gear, etc.). I said "we should make a game where all you do is click a button and a number goes up, cut out the middle man. We can call it 'Numberplus'".

So it turns out we invented the entire clicker genre in 2005.

This is not a game. There is no agency, there is no failure, there is no learning, there is no strategy that matters.

Good job

Reminds me a little of Disgaea games. Get to level 9999, reincarnate to level 1 giving yourself better stats for your next run to level 9999.

Eventually you can get characters from 1 to 9999 in 4 or 5 battles, storing tons of levels very quickly, making ridiculously powerful characters, eventually doing billions of damage per hit.

Really disappointed the game is not called Adventure Tapitalist.

I have lost all hope for humanity.

I get the pure animal lust that drives these games, but I think they're just not for me. If the numbers that go up don't mean anything for a game system, I just can't get invested.

As someone who is more or less depressed that this is a real genre now, I've sat down and tried out a bunch of different idle games, clickers and otherwise incremental experiences just to figure out what makes them tick, as well as observed how my friends and coworkers play them.

One trend I've noticed is that the people in my circle who get the most obsessed about clickers, are the sames ones who are approaching a thousand hours spent grinding in Diablo 3, and/or spend their entire lunch break at work memorizing the Stardew Valley wiki after finally finding an excuse to bail on Terraria, and/or "used to play WoW" for an unspecified duration, an unspecified number of years ago and constantly threaten to get back in without even understanding why they want to.

Here's the secret: Those "more engaging and interesting" mechanics don't count for crap to a certain type of player. They're fun to discover and explore for the first dozen hours until you've learned how they work, but after that. they're either mere obstacles or mere tools in the quest to optimize your numbers so you can get bigger numbers faster.

This is more or less why some people play games at all, turns out! They just hadn't realized it until their first clicker came about. And I'm discovering that the reason why I just can't enjoy a game like Diablo, and why no MMORPG ever has hooked me (unless it's been for something unrelated to gameplay), is the same as why I don't enjoy clickers. It's exactly the same type of draw. I want something more visceral and reactive out of my games, and perhaps you do as well, but a lot of people don't! Maybe they've been avid RPG players, or turn based strategy fans or whatnot, but in the end, maybe the true draw has always been the simple desire to watch something grow.

Take any arbitrary power level, or number on a leaderboard, something that a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to improve for no gain other than watching something climb, in any game you can think of. You just may be able to substitute their game of choice with a well made clicker and they'll get exactly the same kind of satisfaction out of it. All of those free mobile games where you plop down some buildings and then level them up so you can get more resources so you can level more buildings up, and each time takes longer than the last? Exactly the same draw.

It's sort of scary. This is what a lot of games have secretly been about all along. We just haven't been able to see it for all the superfluous mechanics. But on the flipside, this IS what a lot of games have been all along, so if you think we're doomed just now, you're probably a few decades late on the draw! We'll probably be fine.

Probably.

(I should probably start writing blogs instead of replying to comments if I'm gonna keep writing these goddamn philosophical essays every time I get an excuse. Ah well, simple pleasures...)

you're a madman... a madman!!!!

The more I watch clickers the less I understand the appeal of clickers.

So I actually just completed this game on mobile. I bought everything possible for all 3 planets and did the events. It took over 6 months (the balance for Earth used to be fucked. It would take a couple days to get enough angels to make an upgrade worth it. They did an update a couple weeks back that made earth less insane), I played it on break for like 30 seconds at a time at work.

Don't do it. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. Only disappointment.

@cale: That was my immediate thought. When I played Tiny Trains at least it was like "Hey now I have a new train and so I have 5 trains to run". This shit is mind boggling.

@cripplor said:

Believe it or not, the idea of an idle game has been around in some format for a lot longer than people think.

The earliest example that I can remember is in Wild Arms 3 released in 2002. The only way to reliable way to gain healing items is through a farming "minigame" that is really no different from an idle game. You'd submit your Heal Berries and such to the farmer gal and the more you submitted the more frequent and (I think) quicker an item would grow. This was all done from a menu.

It would not surprise me if that minigame was inspired by some obscure farming game series that was only released in Japan, but I haven't looked into it myself.

There certainly were other idle-like mechanics from earlier games, but they usually involved things happening in the background while you go play the "actual" game.

@rox360: 100% Agreed though I came to that conclusion after getting to lvl 20 in World of Warcraft and 10 in guildwars back when they were new and all my friends were into it, the coming of clickers definitely confirmed my suspicions though. I wouldnt mind it too much if modern games didnt start to take so much from them to try and appeal to as much people as possible. (Like the ridiculous need to level up in MP shooters nowadays for example)

I just beat this game last week on my phone (by beat, I mean all upgrades and bonuses on all planets) without spending anything. It took over a year though. No more clicker games for me (aside from Time Clickers, but I started that before Ad Cap!)

@cripplor: That is pretty much the same conversation I had that led me to realise why I hate loot-driven gameplay loops haha

I don't know about the game, but it hands down has best logos. <3 that hippo.

The only way I get this game is when I am mining Thamium 9 to buy a better spaceship. I wish it went like this game though.

Otherwise, I righteously do not get it.

Xbox One???

I do not understand the appeal of these games at all.

THE NUMBERS JUST KEEP GETTING HIGHER