From Rusty’s Retirement to Tiny Pasture. The new wave of desktop buddies on Steam

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I’ve never been particularly drawn to time-wasting games like Cookie Clicker; honestly, I didn’t understand the excitement it generated. It’s astonishing to me that even the Banana clicker manages to attract around 150,000 players daily. But there’s a recent trend on Steam that I find myself fully supporting – those small, comforting games that nestle at the bottom of your screen. Yes, they do involve some idle play, but they offer so much more!

The success of Rusty’s Retirement

Simple and easy-to-play desktop games have seen a resurgence lately, with the past few months witnessing their growing popularity once again. The first time I became aware of this trend was when Rusty’s Retirement, developed by Mister Morris Games as a solo project, debuted in April 2024 and attracted more than 20,000 players on Steam.

In Rusty’s Retirement, you manage a charming farmstead, cultivating crops, producing biofuel, and delegating labor-intensive tasks to your friendly robotic assistants. As you progress, you have the opportunity to enhance and personalize these helpful bots, all while expanding your farm for increased productivity.

Currently, it has approximately 2,000 simultaneous players, and with each new update, it appears to garner even more interest. Therefore, it’s evident that its popularity is not merely a fleeting moment.

A frog, some grass, and pure chill

Coming up next is Ropuka’s Idle Island, a game developed by Moczan, Little Chmura, and Begona Pereda, released in January 2025. In this title, you essentially relax and enjoy watching your frog companion diligently mowing the grass around his home. The grass you gather functions as currency to improve his tools and decorate his small island.

This tranquil game, featuring mellow lo-fi tunes and soothing nature sounds, makes for an ideal background distraction while you’re working or engaged in other activities. Although it didn’t amass the player base of Rusty’s Retirement, its charm has persisted, maintaining its popularity even after several weeks have passed.

My Little Life is like a low-key The Sims

Following the conclusion of Ropuka’s Idle Island, a game called My Little Life from 9FingerGames appeared. In this game, you assume responsibility for guiding a small person’s life and aiding them in choosing a profession and personalizing their living space with numerous unlockable items. As you advance, additional characters can be introduced, each with unique objectives, making it somewhat like a mini version of The Sims.

Though it didn’t achieve the same level of fame as the ‘froggy’ and ‘little robot’ games, it continues to garner favorable feedback on Steam and maintains a daily player count of more than 200.

Tiny Pasture lets you grow the weirdest farm ever

Once more, a fresh, snuggly game has been introduced. On February 18th, Tiny Pasture by CaveLiquid was launched, and astonishingly, within mere hours, over 5,640 individuals were simultaneously enjoying the game!

In this game, you have the opportunity to purchase various types of baby animals ranging from rabbits, foxes, and alpacas, all the way to slimes and zombies. As these creatures mature, they will drop coins that you can accumulate to enlarge your pasture and introduce even more adorable (or spooky) species.

Why modern idle games are more than just mindless clickers

It seems like there’s a surge of idle games recently, but they aren’t exactly a new concept. In fact, these types of games with continuous progression have been around for quite some time – from early Flash and browser-based games to mobile clickers, and now gaining popularity on Steam. Essentially, they are just evolving and finally receiving the attention they deserve.

As a gamer, I’ve got to say, the surge in popularity of these new idle games isn’t just because we’re all stuck at home due to remote work. There’s a deeper appeal here that goes beyond that. Unlike some games that are merely designed to hook you for a brief moment before leaving a bad taste in your mouth, these ones I’m talking about are genuinely well-crafted and keep us engaged over time. They might not be the high-octane indie titles like FlyKnight or A Game About Digging a Hole, but they’re definitely worth spending some quality gaming time on.

These developers put a great deal of passion and dedication into creating their games, not just hastily assembled titles using repetitive, familiar assets. Instead, they meticulously design these games, infusing them with thoughtful details. Some may even include unique features or artistic flair, but all share that addictive, well-structured repetition and relaxing, casual ambiance that we sometimes crave. This is why the indie idle genre continues to produce exceptional, captivating titles from time to time.

  • indie games
  • clicker
  • idle games

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2025-02-19 01:02