In this guide, you can find our top picks for the best idle games available on Android and iOS mobile devices. The competition here is really fierce, with tons of titles to choose from, so we have quite a few games to look at.
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We love this type of games and find them fascinating, whether they’re truly incremental games or idle clickers (which are no longer as popular as they used to be), and we are sure you feel the same.
With so many launched every week, it’s difficult to keep track of the best, and some hidden gems can easily be missed. In an effort to prevent that as much as possible, here are our top picks for idle games on Android and iOS—games you will love playing in 2023 and beyond!
Cats & Soup
Cat lovers might go nuts about this game. Super cute kitties of all breeds make soup in an idyllic forest while you collect money and use it to unlock new recipes, ingredients, cats, and accessories. Some of the best aspects are that cats continue collecting resources automatically, even when you go idle, and that you can dress them up in adorable little outfits and feed them fish for doing a good job.
Featuring beautiful illustrations that look straight out of a Studio Ghibli movie, this game can also really help you wind down after a stressful day with its soothing ASMR sounds. If you have ever thought about how awesome it would be to open a cat café—or even better, a cat soup kitchen—here’s your chance!
If you decide to give this adorable game a go, check out our guide for beginners, so you can get a proper start.
Money Tree: Cash Grow Game
It seems that money does grow on trees after all! In this simple, yet fun, game, your job is to tend to the money tree, earn enough resources to purchase upgrades and power-ups, and get houses, cars, or the help of different celebrities that make your money garden grow even more.
Collecting enough resources leads you to hire gardeners that can harvest the money for you, and evolving your money tree is incredibly satisfying. Give it a go and try to become a proper tree-llionaire!
AFK Arena
If you’re looking for excitement in your idle games, look no further than AFK Arena. This game offers a compelling story, where you have to fight sinister Hypogeans and protect the kingdom of Esperia by collecting more than 100 heroes and using them in the tactical card-based gameplay.
The game offers several different modes, including a PvP Arena for battling other players, and the artwork alone is a reason enough to try it out. While going beyond a typical idle game, AFK Arena still lets you level up your heroes and reap different rewards while you’re offline.
We have also compiled a guide and a list of tips and tricks to help you find your way around.
Light a Way
Those who like their idle games with an epic story will probably love Light a Way. In this stunning mobile fairytale, your main task is to protect the creatures of Light and banish the darkness that threatens the entire world.
Players can build their own Guardians and collect 30 adorable Lumis, which come with unique skills and represent the basis for the game’s idle mode. When you get tired of tapping and using different spells or your customizable Lightstone Staff to progress, just go offline and leave the task to your sidekicks.
Idle Heroes
From Sara Forest all the way to the High Heaven, this RPG takes you on an adventure where you need to defeat the forces of darkness. The game abounds with different modes for extra hours of fun—besides quests, you can play in dungeons, fight other players from all over the world in the PvP Arena, join a guild to face powerful bosses with friends, and much more.
Idle Heroes features more than 400 heroes that you can train and upgrade, and its idle system allows you to step away and return to better, stronger warriors, so you can continue the adventure without any hiccups.
Don’t worry if the game seems too complicated at first—read our strategy guide and keep on winning!
Idle Theme Park Tycoon
This is one of the best idle games that we have played by a long run. There are plenty of upgrades for making your theme park the most profitable one out there, and with so many choices in terms of fun rides and whatnot, you will never get bored!
In addition to that, you can also buy bigger and better islands to build more theme parks on, and all the little upgrades that you build will reflect in the game (so if you buy an extra seat, you will actually see it on your ride, for example).
It’s a great game, and you can achieve pretty much anything as long as you log in occasionally to collect profits and upgrade some more.
If you decide to download it, you can check out our game guide for helpful tips and tricks!
Fallout Shelter
Like many other idle games out there, Fallout Shelter starts off pretty intense. It will require you to do quite a few tasks until your vault is up and running, but after that, you can just kick back and relax.
The main purpose of the game is to build a massive and productive shelter and wait for the explorers to come back. Other than that, you gather resources, upgrade your vault, and pretty much oversee your crew while they take care of everything.
We’ve had quite a blast playing it, so if you want to give it a try, make sure you also check out our game guide to get a head start!
Dungeon, Inc.
This game follows you from the depths of Hell, all the way to the craziest dungeon settings you could imagine, with the sole purpose of building your own dungeon. It is pretty simple in essence, but it has no limits to what you could exploit (in-game, of course).
Dungeon, Inc. is extremely fun, and the graphics make it only more likable. So, if you want to enjoy a terrific idle game, definitely give this one a try. We even have a game guide for you.
Egg, Inc.
Do you like chickens? Well, they are adorable, so who doesn’t? If you ever dreamed of being a successful chicken farmer or even owning your very own farm, you can try that in this idle game!
In Egg, Inc., you build farms, upgrade them, and ultimately try to discover what came first—the chicken or the egg. Okay, not quite. Your goal is to create the ultimate chicken farm and continuously expand. It’s simple, yet fun, and (at least for us) the ideal game for a Sunday afternoon.
Almost a Hero
In another idle game with heavy RPG elements, we move on to this fun title that puts you in charge of a band of misfits—those who almost became heroes, but failed for one reason or another.
For example, we have Lia, who shoots a bow but doesn’t quite hit the target. Fun and lighthearted, Almost a Hero does manage to deliver incredible complexity and huge replay value, plus hours of countless fun. There are tons of challenges and side missions that will keep you busy, and you won’t be able to avoid falling in love with the game.
Check out our guide here, then make sure to give this game a try if you want to enjoy a not-your-typical-hero story in your spare time!
Adventure Capitalist
Take advantage of all the opportunities around you and build your own business empire starting from the bottom, but with big dreams. From there onward, the sky is the limit!
A really cool idle game with tons of features and scoring high on the fun factor, Adventure Capitalist doesn’t require a ton of commitment on your side, which can be a great thing. In this case, the whole combination works—flawlessly, we might add—,so give the game a try and see how fun it is.
Realm Grinder
You just know we can’t complete a “best of” list without a pixel graphics game. Realm Grinder is a truly addictive game, featuring quite realistic pixel graphics, which is definitely going to give you satisfaction when playing.
The main goal is to expand from a tiny settlement into a full-fledged realm, with castles and everything that you could imagine. To all the pixel graphics lovers out there who also love idle games, we suggest giving this one a try!
This concludes our list of the best mobile idle games. There are a ton of options out there, and we might’ve missed some of your favorites, so if you have any other games to add to our list, don’t hesitate to comment below and let us know.
