Idle Slayer is an infinite runner RPG game with idle gameplay elements. It’s free to play on Steam and mobile but I played the Steam version. You start the game simply automatically running and jumping to collect coins. You can spend the coins on equipment and upgrades that will increase your coins per second, allowing you to gain them passively. Early on you’ll unlock enemies which randomly appear along the path and give you coins for slaying them. You simply walk into them to slay them. Larger ones, called giants, may take more hits to kill but yield higher rewards. You can also unlock quests which may involve a variety of things like defeating a specific number of certain enemies or performing certain actions. Defeated enemies sometimes drop materials which can be used to craft items. Temporary items give you limited time boosts or one-time rewards per use. Permanent items give you permanent upgrades. Slaying enemies also rewards you with souls. You can only claim these souls when you ascend. Ascension resets all of your current progress in the equipment and upgrades tabs, but it converts your souls into slayer points that can be spent in a skill tree. This gives you a number of upgrades, including access to new quests, weapons, and even new areas of the game. You go to these new areas by warping, which is on a cooldown. Different areas have different enemies which can yield different rewards. These areas also have different appearance rates of coins and enemies. Through ascension upgrades you’ll be able to unlock ultra ascension. By doing this you’ll reset all of your progress in the skill tree but you’ll get ultra ascension points to spend into overall modifiers that remain present throughout the rest of the game. You can also unlock ultra ascension upgrades that will remain unlocked even after ultra ascending, as well as unlocking new upgrades previously inaccessible until ultra ascending. You can get a rage mode ability that is on a cooldown but has you collecting and killing everything on screen for a short time with massive multipliers. Eventually you’ll unlock craftable keys that transport you to the village. This is where the only semblance of story in the game exists. There are some special missions that show up here with the villagers. This is where you can upgrade your armory items, which are special pieces of equipment that replace some of your standard pieces and can have varying stat boosts. There’s a casino with a roulette table and some rewards you can buy with your winnings. Completing some missions here will also give you unlocks for the main game as well. You can trigger mini events like bonus stages where you are infinitely boosting and collecting spheres trying not to fall or run out of time. There’s a chest hunt where you open up random chests for gold and souls while trying not to find the mimics. There’s a climbing event where you bounce on breaking platforms trying to make it to the top of the stage without falling down. There even a repeatable boss fight. There are also limited multipliers for coins and souls, hordes which make tons of enemies spawn, gem rushes that replace coins with higher value gems, and frenzies which make tons of coins spawn. There are also divinities, which are upgrades that can be toggled on and off. These cost divinity points which are mainly gained by reseting minions. Minions are an unlockable feature from the skill tree that can be sent out for a set period of time at the cost of remaining slayer points and will return with more souls to turn into slayer points for the next ascension. You also get daily and weekly quests that refresh. There’s a tab for spending jewels of soul, an item that mainly shows up from cracking open dragon eggs, the reward for completing daily quests. You can also buy these with real money. These can be spent on new characters which mainly act as different skins. You can also buy some permanent upgrades and other boosts in the soul shop as well. On top of this you also get a bestiary for examining different enemies and tons of miscellaneous stat tracking. There are Steam achievements as well as in-game achievements to work towards, but there is no real ending and the game is still currently being worked on. Oh, and you also still gain coins, souls, materials, and quest progress idly while the game is closed, hence the name.

The combination of genres does make Idle Slayer a great daily game to pick up and put down a lot. You get upgrades that keep adding up even when you’re resetting other things. There’s some mystery in the lore that makes you want to explore just a little more each time. There’s enough to do with platforming and mini events that you can still have fun when you’re actively playing. But you also don’t feel like you’re wasting time when you’re away because you’re still racking up those coins, souls, materials, and quests. You’re also always making progress towards achievements as well, so the entire thing feels like you’re always working towards some kind of goal. Plus the pixel art and music are very appealing as well. Simple. Addictive. And best of all it doesn’t push you to spend money. It’s perfectly playable and enjoyable without spending a dime. In fact, spending money doesn’t even get you much of boost so it’s really just there to support the developer. There have even been a few crossover events with other things like Shovel Knight and Attack on Titan. The game is still being updated to this day!

Unfortunately, that’s part of the problem. The updates keep adding more content and more achievements along with it. The game already lacked an ending, and perhaps a definitive story ending is planned for someday in the future, but adding more and more makes it feel like you’ll never be truly done until the game dies. There’s just no satisfying ending point. Resetting everything also feels like losing progress to make progress. It feels like a step backwards most of the time. Sometimes the progress just halts without it though so unless you ultra ascend at the right time you’ll spend a of time unnecessarily spinning your wheels. And by the time you’re ready to quit this never ending daily grind, you realize that all that continuous progress really feels meaningless because you never accomplished anything. It’s something the genre really needs to work on in general, but I had higher hopes for this game when I first jumped in.

There’s not a lot more to really say. For as many little things there are to mention for gameplay, it all gets boiled down pretty quickly. I think Idle Slayer is a pretty good idler game. It certainly kept my attention the longest, which is high praise considering it kept me playing longer than Sakura Clicker and THAT had hot anime girls in it! I’ve played Idle Slayer for roughly two years now. I still haven’t completed it. And the updates keep pushing me further and further from getting all the achievements. So this is where I draw the line. I’ve spent real money. I’ve poured in a ton of time. But I think Idle Slayer has really purged this daily game idler interest from my body. I want games to be a complete experience, with a beginning AND and end. I’d recommend this game to anyone looking for an idler to fill their downtime, but I just can’t keep playing it myself. It was fun while it lasted. Onto the next chapter of my gaming journey. Besides, if I ever come back to it someday… think of all the stuff I’ll have idled up by then!

https://youtu.be/xeF6O2_2Ldk?si=s6-nkyd2kGG-L_qR

achievement farming fs to many p2w items in the shop that make u feel like u have to buy them because its slow
just another clicker game but the minigame is fun kinda an off brand cookie clicker