I should probably begin by saying I have a weakness for idle games. The allure of always progressing and the goal of that next unlockable is appealing to me. I can't describe properly why that's the case. I've played many idle games. Clicker heroes, adventure capitalist, soda dungeon, the cookie game, time clickers and more.

Realm Grinder is the best by an absolute mile.

Does it do anything different to the other games listed? Not really, no. You're still clicking on things to make things happen until you reach a point of allowing the game to be self sufficient and left alone until you want to update it and get bigger numbers. What Realm Grinder does differently to the other games is include a gigantic amount of depth. You're not simply trying to reach the biggest possible numbers. Instead you are trying to reach goal after goal after goal. And everytime you think you've reached the limit, the game adds even more goals.

You start off with six factions, three good and three evil. They each have their own unique playstyle and game impacting spells. One is focused on you the player clicking and rewards you for being active. Another focuses on spells and increases mana regeneration and decreases spell costs. Another rewards you for playing for long periods, including exponentionally increasing offline bonuses.

With each soft reset you unlock new perks. Eventually you unlock neutral factions, which (temporarily) are an absolutely enormous shift in power. The previous factions suddenly seem a joke in comparison. But wait, there's more. Eventually you unlock challenges, rewarding powerful passive bonuses. But to unlock these bonuses, you have to complete the challenges on the vanilla classes. But wait, there's more. Eventually you unlock Mercenaries, enabling you to choose perks from every available faction and combine them into an extremely powerful unit. The best of all 9 worlds are available, giving you the choice of whether to massively boost spell production, production bonus or a hybrid.

But wait, there's more! After enough time with mercs and enough soft resets, you unlock bonus sub factions for the vanilla classes. These sub factions increase the power of vanilla classes to ridiculous levels and make them completely viable again. But wait, there's even more. Soon enough you unlock research, allowing for passive bonuses for the faction you are playing as. But similar to challenges, you need to match a criteria to unlock them. You also only have a limited amount of options initially. Each soft reset slowly adds more and more options, each increasing in power. You only have a limited amount of options to choose from, but there is also a lot of freedom. I've neglected to talk about trophies, which play a huge role.

Trophies are gained through specific criteria. They are similar to challenges, but the rewards are available to every faction at all times, rather than the faction specific challenge rewards. These trophies incentivise you to reach goals, rather than reach numbers. For example, one of the most powerful rewards comes from a challenge that requires you to reach a mana regeneration that is higher than your maximum mana. This involves picking an appropriate faction, picking appropriate bonuses and being very careful about not buying bonuses you instinctually would normally choose. Some are quite simple, some require a lot of time and patience and some require precise actions to unlock.

There's a lot I haven't mentioned. Bloodlines. Monthly events. Excavations. A spell casting micro management system. And remember the sub factions I mentioned earlier? Remember the stupidly powerful neutral factions? Eventually you unlock a sub faction for the neutral factions (took me about 750 hours). But even then there's more to do. Now I have challenges for this sub faction. I have more research to unlock. I still have trophies to earn. And I know that way into the distance I'll unlock mercenary specific research making them relevant again.

Simply put, this is a game that has kept my attention for over 750 hours (which doesn't include the time spent in my browser before it launched on Steam) and I still come back for more. But most importantly, I enjoy it. I've had days where I've been so engrossed by new content unlocks (looking at you Dwarven Elf builds) that I've spent all my spare gaming time which I'd ordinarily use to play a regular game and instead spent it all focused on Realm Grinder.

If you enjoy idle games and are prepared to handle the complexity required, then you will absolutely adore this game. And to my Steam friends who have to put up with seeing Realm Grinder in my currently playing all the time, Sorry, not Sorry!