Melvor Idle

1. Summary

Fans describe Melvor Idle as RuneScape's skilling loop turned into an idle game. RuneScape comes up in 41% of the detailed reviews, usually as the whole pitch: chop, mine, fish, cook and fight your way to level 99 without clicking, walking or paying a subscription. Players praise how the skills feed into each other, how much there is to do, the pay-once model with no microtransactions, and how easily it fits around work and family, since progress carries across PC, phone and browser. About one in eight detailed reviews calls it the best idle game the reviewer has played. That praise runs through six years of reviews, and the positive share stayed above 90% through 2024.

A minority of reviews are negative, and their complaints fall into a few groups. Some players find it dull, a spreadsheet of progress bars with no sound or visual reward. Others lost their saves: they describe cloud saves overwriting local ones, corrupted files and months of progress vanishing, and they object to an online requirement for a single-player game. Some say it needs too much babysitting to count as idle (combat that needs watching, limited bank space, an offline cap reviewers put at 24 hours), and long-time players complain about paid expansions and balance updates that cut Township.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

RuneScape's skilling without the clickingHigh

RuneScape comes up more than any other topic. Players describe Melvor as "Runescape without having to click." They like that it keeps the parts they enjoyed (levelling skills, gathering, crafting gear, slayer tasks, dungeons) and drops the parts they didn't: walking between locations, bank runs, the monthly fee, other players and botting worries. One reviewer repeated a joke from other reviews: "It's like Botting but you don't get banned for it, ha!" Many write as lapsed RuneScape players who no longer have time for it.

Critics use the same comparison against it. RuneScape also comes up in 19% of the detailed negative reviews, usually to say the game keeps the grind and loses the world: "It's literally just watching runescape XP bars go up without getting to play runescape." Several players who never played RuneScape say they enjoyed it anyway, while others say the appeal didn't land without the nostalgia.

One of the best idle games players have triedHigh

About one in eight detailed reviews (12%) calls Melvor the best, a favourite or "the GOAT" of idle and incremental games. These fans point to the absence of the resets and ad-driven pacing they associate with mobile idlers, and a few say it is the only idle game that ever held their attention. The ranking is the fans' own: some players who dislike Melvor name other idlers they prefer, such as NGU Idle, Realm Grinder and Magic Research.

Interlocking skills and a lot to doMedium

"There are so many skills and almost all of them are complexly intertwined with each other," wrote one player, and 10% of detailed reviews praise the game's depth or the volume of content. Fans like that fishing feeds cooking, cooking feeds combat, and combat drops feed crafting, so every skill matters and there is always a next goal. Players who finished the base game say the expansions and challenge modes extend it further. A minority disagree, saying most crafts end up useless or that the interconnection feels thin.

Fits around work and a busy lifeMedium

9% of detailed reviews talk about running it in the background, on a second monitor, at work, or in a few minutes a day. One reviewer called it the answer for days when you want to game but are "too tired to actually play." Players with office jobs, mortgages or health problems describe it as a low-effort way to feel progress, and many leave it running while playing or watching something else.

Play on PC, phone and browser with one purchaseMedium

Mobile and cross-platform play come up in 16% of detailed reviews, usually as a plus. Players like checking in on their phone during the day and continuing on PC, and several were pleased that "purchasing this game on Steam enabled the premium version on Android and Apple devices as well." The save-loss complaints below come from this same cloud sync, and some players still miss Steam Cloud support.

Pay once, no microtransactionsLow

Some reviews single out the business model: "Pay once. No ads. No micro-transactions." Players contrast it with free-to-play idlers built around cash shops. The paid expansions complicate this for some (see the split section).

Mods and challenge modesLow

Players value the official mod support, often recommending quality-of-life mods (including one that lifts the offline cap) and noting that achievements still work with them. Hardcore and Adventure modes get praise from players on their second or third character for adding risk and slower, more restricted progression.

A developer who listensLow

Some reviewers praise the developer as active on Reddit and Discord, responsive to feedback, and steady with updates.

Where players are split

Slow grind: relaxing or tediousHigh

Grind, slow pacing or tedium come up in 15% of detailed reviews. Fans treat the long timers as the point: "For long-term planners, not for the impatient." Detractors describe weeks spent on one skill, the gaps between unlocks, and upgrades that feel too small to matter: "ive been leveling firemaking for like 2 weeks and its just farm wood, wait 2 days, burn wood, wait 3 days, repeat". Several players who otherwise like it say mid-game and later levels slow down sharply.

Paid expansionsMedium

Expansions come up in 11% of detailed reviews, more often from long-term players. Fans call the DLC worthwhile and say the paid model beats microtransactions: "Its paid expansions are traditional content additions, not little traps designed to interrupt your patience." Some early buyers say they understood the first expansions would be free and objected when they became paid. Other players say the DLC made the game more tedious, that it took away skillcape bonuses they had earned, that achievements now sit behind paid content, or that endgame DLC is locked behind beating Into the Abyss or the main game's final boss. One long-time player put the middle view this way: "Base game is 100% worth it, DLC are a mixed bag."

How idle it really isMedium

Players disagree about whether Melvor is an idle game at all. Many fans like that it is semi-active, with combat, gear swaps and planning when you are at the screen and gathering skills to leave running otherwise. Critics say it asks for too much babysitting: "This is probably the least idle game I've ever played that's called itself an idle game." Their specific complaints are that only one action runs at a time, combat needs watching until auto-eat and auto-loot are unlocked, the bank fills up and "Expansion of inventory slots is gated behind an excessive amount of gold", and offline progress stops after 24 hours (reviewers from earlier years mention caps of 12 and then 18 hours). Some players say late-game events stop the idling outright; in the endgame, one wrote, "there are several events that prohibit you from doing so." The Impending Darkness event comes up in 2 negative reviews, one of which calls it a final-boss fight where you can die almost immediately.

Learning curve and the wikiMedium

The wiki or confusing systems come up in 7% of detailed reviews. Some fans treat the wiki as part of the game: "Like Runescape, it takes a bit to get into and the Wiki is your best friend." Critics say the tutorial explains little, tooltips are missing, and long-term goals are unclear, so you have to leave the game to make decisions: "never had to use a freaking wiki for an idle game". A few players hit tutorial softlocks, such as failing a bow-crafting step and being unable to buy the materials to retry.

Paying on Steam when other versions are freeLow

Mostly in 2020 and 2021, players pointed out that a free version runs in the browser and on mobile. Fans saw the Steam purchase as an ad-free upgrade and a way to support the developer. Detractors felt the Steam price was too much for what free idlers offer: "I just can't recommend buying it on steam for $9.99 when it is free on the google play store." Newcomers raise this more often than long-term players.

What frustrates players

Dull for players who don't click with itMedium

Boredom comes up in 16% of the detailed negative reviews. These players say there is no story, no world and no visible character, just bars filling: "Like you're clicking around on an excel sheet rather than a game." Some say the progress never feels rewarding because upgrades are small and there is no prestige or scaling loop. Newer players raise this more than long-term ones, and several of these reviews say outright that the game simply isn't for them.

Lost saves, cloud accounts and the online requirementMedium

Save and connection problems appear in 11% of the detailed negative reviews. Players describe loading the wrong save and overwriting progress, the mobile app force-saving over a PC save, corrupted cloud and local saves at the same time, saves stored in browser data that got cleared, and characters or whole accounts disappearing. One player joked that the cloud save is named that way "because your save evaporates into the clouds." Several say support could not restore anything and urge others to export backups by hand. A separate set of complaints is about access: needing a connection and a working server to launch a single-player game ("Why does a single player game, with local saves, require an internet connection ?"), a separate Melvor account and login prompts, EULA updates they had to accept to keep playing, and outages that locked them out. Reviewers say an offline version has long been promised or sits in beta, and one reports that switching to the offline beta got the game running again for a while.

Cluttered interface and no soundMedium

The interface splits opinion: some fans call it clean and pleasant to click. Critics, mostly newer players, describe too many tabs and menus, constant scrolling, small text, missing tooltips, a shop with no bulk buying, and look-alike icons. The lack of sound and music comes up in positive reviews as well as negative ones. A player who asked for a refund over it wrote: "The dead silence and lack of feedback from anything clicked on or completed just killed it for me."

Client bugs: won't close, high CPU, slow menusLow

A smaller group reports technical problems with the Steam client: the game staying in memory after closing so Steam thinks it is still running, high CPU or GPU use on combat screens, lag when switching tabs, memory leaks over long sessions, launch failures, and trouble on Steam Deck and older macOS versions. Most of the reports about the game not closing date from 2026, and recent reviewers are annoyed it is still unfixed with a sequel on the way: "having a bug that prevents the game from closing and having to force close steam everytime just to get the game to shutdown is completely inexcusable".

Balance updates that gutted TownshipLow

Two updates drew bursts of negative reviews from established players. Reviewers name patch 1.1.1 (in reviews from November 2022) and version 1.2 (September 2023) as the changes that locked Township's trader behind tasks and cut its rewards, wiping out plans built around it: "locking t2 crates behind 95 tasks is insane." One asked why a casual idle game needed the nerf at all. Earlier, a few players objected to the Agility and Cooking reworks.

3. The player conversation

The conversation is warm and often jokey. Many reviews are one-line variations on "number go up" or RuneScape gags. Negative reviews are a minority (8% of all reviews), and they spread across boredom, lost saves, the amount of babysitting, the interface and balance changes.

Who raises what differs by experience. Players who leave early talk more about boredom and presentation: no sound, a spreadsheet-like interface, and paying for something free elsewhere. Long-term players talk more about expansions and about Township and other balance changes. Save loss and the question of how idle the game really is come up at similar rates in both groups.

The positive share drifted down from 97% of reviews written in 2020 and 95% in 2021 to 86% in 2025 and 85% in 2026. The busiest week was the one reviewers tie to the 1.0 release in November 2021 (604 reviews that week, 97% positive). Two dips line up with the Township balance updates: the week of 2022-11-14 fell to 72% positive and the week of 2023-09-04 (139 reviews) to 73%, and both recovered within weeks. Most mentions of a sequel, Melvor Idle 2, come from 2025 and 2026 reviews, as do most complaints about the client not closing.

4. What the developers could do

1. Make saves impossible to lose silently. Players who lost progress ask for automatic local backups, a clear warning before a cloud or mobile save overwrites a newer one, and Steam Cloud support.
2. Let more of the game run unattended. The babysitting complaints name specific changes: cheaper or larger bank space, earlier auto-eat and auto-loot, a longer offline cap, and some way to queue actions.
3. Fix the Steam client's closing and CPU bugs. Reports of the game staying open after closing, heavy CPU use on combat tabs and slow tab switching came up mostly in 2026 reviews, some of them from players who otherwise liked the game.
4. Launch and play without a server connection. Players object to a single-player game failing to start offline or during outages, and ask for a proper offline mode.
5. Give the interface a usability pass and add optional sound. Newcomers cite clutter, scrolling, missing tooltips and total silence as reasons they quit early, and fans also ask for simple click and level-up sounds.
6. Explain more in the game itself. Better tooltips, clearer long-term goals and a tutorial without softlocks would answer the players who quit because they needed the wiki for every decision.
7. Preview big balance changes before shipping them. The Township updates in November 2022 and September 2023 each pulled that week's positive share into the low 70s.
8. Be clearer about what each expansion gates. Players were caught out by achievements tied to DLC, endgame content locked behind Into the Abyss or the final boss, and skillcape bonuses taken away by an expansion.