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Harry's hot takes: 7 franchises we'd love to see turned into rubbish idle RPGs

Not good ones

Harry's hot takes: 7 franchises we'd love to see turned into rubbish idle RPGs
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If you've got a franchise, and you want to make a mobile game out of it, there's a very real chance that right now you're thinking about turning it into a rubbish idle RPG.

You know the genre I'm talking about. The one where the player doesn't actually do anything, but spends an inordinate amount of time trying to earn characters that they know and recognise to put into their team.

It's a beautiful representation of the empty, echoing nothingness that lives at the heart of both mobile gaming and every human endeavour.

And that makes it ripe for a hot take. So here are 7 other franchises I think are perfect for turning into time-heavy and mechanic-lite slogs into the maw of the abyss.

Sports

Who doesn't want to see which sports person is the best at fighting? I mean, sure, some of them are good at sports, but an ice skater slicing the face off of a pole vaulter with their razor sharp shoe blades?

Or a tiddlywinks champion flicking small plastic slices of death at a hulking rugby monster? And the best bit is you wouldn't have to do anything, because it's a rubbish idle RPG.

Dynasty Warriors

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Dynasty Warriors has hundreds of famous characters. But, more importantly for the rubbish idle RPG genre, it has an almost infinite amount of meaningless cannon fodder that you'd have to collect your way through before you got anyone you even recognise.

That's basically the bread and butter of the rubbish idle RPG genre, so it's going to be a massive success. At least in terms of money. In terms of quality it will, inevitably, be rubbish.

The Monarchy

Everyone will tell you that the monarchy brings money into the economy, but actually it's funded by taxation. So you think you're getting something for nothing, but actually if you want the crown jewels and the knights and the swords, you have to pay quite a lot of money.

That's almost a metaphor for the rubbish idle RPG genre. Now I've actually typed it out, it's not as solid as I thought it was going to be. It's disappointing. And disappointment is also a big part of the rubbish idle RPG genre.

Street Fighter
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Another game with a lot of characters. The best thing about them is, while they each have distinct looks and personalities, the moves you use are pretty much the same whoever you're playing. And that's going to be brilliant for a rubbish idle RPG.

Because doing nothing is the same whether you're Ken, Ryu, Akuma, Dan, Sakura, Evil Ryu, Sagat, Shin Akuma, Violent Ken, Dark Sakura, Allen Snider, Kairi, or Cyber Akuma.

Young Adult Books

Imagine a rubbish idle RPG game where you could play as all of your favourite characters from those books you pretend to know nothing about but secretly adore. That'd be brilliant wouldn't it?

You could finally find out whether sparkly vampire creep is stronger than that girl from those books that nicked their ideas from Battle Royale. Or if chisel jawed didn't-know-he-was-an-alien is tougher than lass with cancer who loves an amputee. And you wouldn't have to do anything.

Politics

Politicians don't do any of the things you tell them to do. And in rubbish idle RPG games you don't tell anyone to do anything. They just do whatever they want, and you get to watch and wonder whether the system you've found yourself playing a part in are actually fair and balanced.

Plus there's loads of politicians, and I'm going to bet you only know the names of like six of them. There's Abraham Lincoln. He'd be a four star hero, and beat up Donald Trump (a one star minion) with the emancipation proclamation.

The Office Where You Work

You'd love to see Bill getting his hip smashed in by Dorothy from accounts, right? Or Sam from HR scratching Lloyd from the marketing department's eyes out? But at the same time you're far too lazy to engage in the necessary interpersonal politics that might make it happen.

So a rubbish idle RPG would be perfect. Because you could just sit back and watch it all happen. And then you could power up Dorothy with a special chair with lumbar support so she could take on the CEO in a raid. God everything's meaningless.

Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.