Clicker Heroes, one of the most popular games on Steam. A simple Clicker-game, which can be played actively and idle (let the game progress automatically). Well, guess what.. Playsaurus released Clicker Heroes 2 (which is still in Beta) and I got to play it. Clickwards, to the review!
I have a big steam library (616 games and counting), but I think I spent most of my time playing Clicker Heroes (actively and idle of course), with a whopping 1317 hours logged at the time of writing. So when I could get my hands on the beta for Clicker Heroes 2, you can imagine I jumped the bandwagon and hoped I would get in. For those unfamiliar with the game:
Ever wondered what one quadrillion damage per second feels like? Wonder no more! Embark on your quest to attain it today! Start out by clicking on the monster to kill them, and get their gold. Spend that gold on hiring new heroes and get more damage. The more damage you deal, the more gold you will get. Feel the power as you grow exponentially and become the greatest ever!
Hire 35 unique heroes to help you do damage without having to click! Meet legendary figures from myth and legend, such as Athena, Amenhotep, King Midas, and more! They will all lend their sword to your cause, for a cost. These guys’ damage per second makes your MMO characters look like kindergarteners. Spend your hard-earned loot on upgrading them to gain special powers to aid you in getting even more gold!
Click your way to defeat powerful monsters. Fight over 100 different monsters, all beautifully drawn and animated. Watch out for the bosses! Need to do the laundry? Give the puppy a shower? No worries! Your heroes will farm monsters and automatically collect the gold while you’re gone, even when the game is closed. But don’t forget to come back and spend all that sweet gold on new heroes and upgrades!
So, Tl;Dr – Click your way to upgrade heroes and gain gold. Use this gold to upgrade heroes, unlock skills and get further into the game. Oh and if you go offline for a bit – no worries, the game automatically goes on without you. Like its predecessor, Clicker Heroes 2 is an idle action RPG where your character moves and attacks automatically and you passively earn money and experience. Your primary input is clicking to attack faster and occasionally upgrading your character. As Playsaurus puts it, it’s “a never-ending journey to the top right of your screen.” That journey starts with you swinging a wooden plank around dealing 20 damage to monsters that drop 30 gold. Fast forward an hour and you’re wielding stone swords, dealing much more damage and gaining so much gold that their values can only be expressed in exponents. And that’s just the beginning.
The big change in this game is that Playsaurses announced it would ditch the free-to-play model, in favor of an upfront cost of $30.
We had to choose one of two models: Paid upfront like traditional games, or free-to-play with a real-money shop like Clicker Heroes 1. We chose paid upfront, for $29.99 (fully refundable for a year after launch), and we are in a situation where we have to explain ourselves to a massive number of players who were expecting/hoping for a free sequel. There are several reasons why we are making this decision.
Since the reasons are a whole page – I selected the most important ones – you can read the full statement here.
- Games are inherently addictive. That alone is not a bad thing, until it gets abused. In Clicker Heroes 1, we never tried to abuse players with our real-money shop, and for the most part we designed it without the shop in mind so that you never have to purchase rubies to progress.
- We made a lot of money from these players who spent thousands. They are known to the industry as “Whales”. Great. If you’re rich, please be my guest. But we don’t want this kind of money if it came from anyone who regrets their decision if it made their lives significantly worse as a result.
- We really don’t like making money off players who are in denial of their addiction. And that’s what a large part of free-to-play gaming is all about. Everyone in the industry seems to rationalize it by shifting the blame, assuming way too much cognizance on the part of their victims. People can make their own decisions, right?
- That said, we’re not going to change how we monetize Clicker Heroes 1. It would destroy our studio if we did. Most people are OK with how we’ve handled it. Our unlimited refund policy still stands. But going forward we’re going to at least try the paid-up-front model for our business. It may or may not work. It probably isn’t worth nearly as much money, but at least we can do it with a cleaner conscience.
Clicker Heroes 2 improves on the ideas established in the original by polishing them up and making them considerably more interactive. For instance, you’re no longer just clicking stationary enemies. You are a person, running along a screen, while also clicking gold piles and energy pylons along the path you’re running, fattening your wallet and replenishing the energy you spend on clicks. Apart from energy, you’ve also got mana which you can spend on skills, of which there are a frightening amount (see the accompanying screenshot). Playsaurus says the current skill tree has around 600 nodes and that new characters will also get their own unique trees. So I’m really curious about those.
Most of those nodes are passive buffs, but some of them are active skills you can slot into your hotbar. Some skills cost energy and some cost mana, but they all have cooldowns. As a result, a big part of Clicker Heroes 2 is building your own skill rotations—yes, exactly like an MMO, albeit greatly simplified. You can even program skills to trigger automatically using a macro-like system called the Automator. You can also tailor your character’s stats by buying gear with specific bonuses—earn more gold, deal more critical hits, encounter more treasure chests, and so on.
So if you don’t mind, I’m going back to my Idle-cave, doing stuff I need to do while ‘playing’ Clicker Heroes 2 until it comes out of Beta. You can get it here.
Tested on Steam
