Full ReleasePC

TBH: Task Bar Hero

Nugem Studio · RPG, ARPG, Indie

Overview

The ultimate tiny idle RPG! Adorable pixel heroes are waiting to join your adventure — from your taskbar. Fight off the boredom of work and daily life with diverse classes, skills, items, and builds!

Read more

《TBH: Task Bar Hero》 is the ultimate tiny idle RPG that fits right into your taskbar.

Just leave it running on your screen — your pixel heroes will automatically gather loot and grow stronger on their own.

Explore diverse regions, level up your characters and gear, build your own strategies, and take down waves of monsters!

  • Small But Mighty RPG
  • A full hack-and-slash RPG experience packed into a tiny window.
  • Mix and match classes, items, and skills to craft your own unique build.
  • Use the Cube System to add and customize stats on your items.
  • 3 Acts and 4 difficulty tiers, each filled with a variety of monsters to defeat.
  • Play Anytime — Even During Work
  • Your adventure keeps going automatically, even when you're away.
  • Simple controls make it easy to pick up and play for as long as you like.
  • Lightweight design lets it run comfortably alongside other programs.
  • Key Features
  • 500+ unique items
  • 50+ monster types
  • 50+ unlockable achievements
  • Items freely tradeable on the Steam Market
  • A loot system with rarities ranging from Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Legendary, all the way up to Immortal, Arcana, Beyond, Celestial, Divine, and Cosmic

From the game's Steam store page.

THE GAMEQ VERDICT8,466 reviews analyzed

What players are actually saying

GameQ verdict: Mixed

A charming taskbar RPG that is easy to leave running, held back by stingy drops, lost items, reported false bans and a bot-driven market.

54% positive on Steam · 47,333 reviews

Praised

Split

Frustrations

1. Summary

TBH is a tiny Diablo-style party RPG that fights on its own in the corner of the screen, and the idea itself gets more praise than anything else in the reviews. Players leave it running while they work, study, watch videos or play other games. They like the pixel art, the steady trickle of loot, and how much depth the Cube, runes and builds pack into something that lives in the taskbar. The free base game and the free Priest are also welcomed.

The frustrations are about how the game ran and how its systems changed after launch. Reviewers describe chest drop rates cut and put on a timer, server lag and desync, items vanishing from the Cube or the stash, and anti-cheat bans that, they say, hit players who never cheated. Players with long play records add an endgame of hard walls, harsh synthesis odds and little to do at the level cap. The Steam Market, where items sell for real wallet money, splits the room: some see it as a fun bonus, while others blame it for bots, collapsing prices and a paid pack of extra listing slots. Several negative reviews open by praising the concept, so the disagreement is mostly over whether the live game lives up to it.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise
A game you can leave running while you do other thingsHigh

This is the main reason people recommend TBH. Office workers, students and people who play other games on a second monitor describe it as a pleasant thing to glance at between tasks, with progress that keeps ticking without demanding attention. "This is my favorite 'screen saver' at work lol" is a typical short review, and longer ones say the same: "Good game to have running in the background while you work, watch movies or videos, or even play another game." Several players with ADHD say it gives them something moving on screen without pulling them away from work. A few of these fans add that they enjoy it most by ignoring the market.

Diablo-style loot and builds in a tiny windowMedium

Players enjoy how much ARPG is packed into the strip: rarity tiers, a rune tree, skill choices per hero, crafting and the Cube for merging and upgrading gear. Fans of Diablo and Path of Exile say the early hours feel like a compressed version of that loop, with constant upgrades and new acts to push. Some of the same players later turn on these systems (see the endgame and drops items below), and several negative reviews still call the early game great.

Charming pixel art and a light footprintMedium

The sprites, animations and music get steady compliments, and players like that the window is small and stays out of the way. A minority report the opposite on performance: memory creeping up over long sessions or higher CPU use than they expected from an idle game (see the low-priority frustrations).

Free to start, with a free PriestLow

Players like that the base game and the Priest cost nothing, and several say they have come a long way without spending any money. Others answer that the free version is thin once you see what the paid heroes, stash and market slots add (see the DLC item in the split panel).

Where players are split
The Steam Market and real-money itemsHigh

Being able to sell drops on the Steam Market for wallet money is the most argued-over feature. Supporters liked earning a few cents or dollars for playing and saw the market as a way to get specific gear. Critics say it shaped everything else badly. Reviewers report that bots farming for the market overloaded the servers around launch, that the market was shut and reopened weeks later with a limit of four listings per eight hours, and that prices fell to a few cents per item. Some players welcomed the limit ("The 4 items per 8 hours is actually a good change"). Reviewers say a paid DLC, the Trade Ship Pack, then sold extra listing slots, which drew replies like "They created the problem so they could then sell the solution." Some players who never wanted the market ask why it exists at all: "Why does an idle game with no pvp and no leaderboards, have an online market?"

Paid heroes, stash space and other DLCMedium

Some players call the DLC fair and optional for a free game and bought the heroes or the supporter pack to support it. Others say key parts sit behind payment: extra stash space, market slots, and classes that reviewers felt were needed to compete. Reviewers disagree about how strong the paid heroes are. One finds them weaker: "Most of the DLC heroes feel underwhelming compared to several of the free heroes, so they don't seem worth purchasing." Another says "the dlc characters are better, obviously" while calling the game fully playable with the free ones. A few players also report that owning more heroes adds their gear to the loot pool, so drops for classes you don't use crowd out the ones you need.

Grind pace and how much the game plays itselfMedium

Players who treat TBH as a background toy are happy with slow, steady progress. Players who engage with it want more control and faster returns, and say they hit points where nothing advances for days: soulstones needed to open act bosses ran short, and later difficulties stall without the right gear. Offline progress, which reviewers say stops after eight hours and gives gold and experience without chests, is a sore point for people who leave the PC off overnight.

Patches and how the game changed after launchLow

Some reviewers credit the developers with quick fixes and say an update in mid-June turned the game around: "The June 15th update, although was delayed from the original date by a week, appears to have resolved the lag and improved drop rate." Others say each update took something away, through drop changes and wipes, and that fixes came slowly. Item stacking arrived later, though a reviewer who mentions it says the inventory still falls short, and the few reviews that discuss a September content update call it thin.

What frustrates players
Drop rate cuts and chests on a timerHigh

Loot drying up is one of the most frequent complaints in the negative reviews. Reviewers say chest drops were reduced in the first weeks and then tied to a cooldown, which made the drop-rate runes and pets they had invested in feel pointless: "Now chests will drop rarely and based on a timer instead of a % chance, rendering Rune upgrades useless." Many say this broke the core idle loop, since the whole appeal is opening chests while doing something else. One reviewer who updated after the mid-June update calls the new drop rate "very much playable", while players in late-game zones say drops there stayed thin.

Server lag, desync and needing to be onlineHigh

Reviewers say TBH checks items against a server, and they describe long waits to open chests, a Cube that froze or refused to act, error messages about local files not matching the server, and disconnects that halted progress. Most of these reports cluster in the first three weeks after launch, when players blamed bot traffic, and they ease after the mid-June server work. Some reviewers still object that an idle game needs to stay online at all.

Anti-cheat bans that hit ordinary playersMedium

A sizeable group of reviews says players were banned without cheating. Those that name a cause point to other games running alongside, Discord, streaming, a crash, or tools such as AutoHotkey, RivaTuner and Lossless Scaling, which one reviewer lists as risky to leave open. Players objected to the permanent mark on their Steam profile and to slow appeals, and several who were later unbanned kept their negative review because of how it was handled: "Having a permanent mark on a 14 year Steam account because a taskbar idle game's tick-rate choked while running basic background processes is completely unacceptable." A few reviewers defend the bans as aimed at botters and cheaters while admitting that some innocent players were caught.

Items lost to the Cube, sync errors and wipesMedium

Reviewers report gear vanishing after synthesis, stash items deleted after server cleanups, rollbacks after a crash or a power cut, and progress lost when switching between two PCs through cloud saves. "Game scams you when you use Synsthesis tab, the items will disappear." For a game built on slowly collecting things, this lands hard: "So hours of progress of opening chests, merging items, crafting items, and decorating items can all end up going to nothing." A couple of players say they recovered lost items from a save backup.

Endgame walls, harsh synthesis odds and thin contentMedium

Players who reach the later difficulties describe stages they cannot clear with any build, synthesis that eats nine items at a time with success odds they say feel far lower than stated, top rarities that seem out of reach, and little to do once they hit the level cap. "It's a shame because the early game is great, but the endgame RNG and systems ruin the experience." The few reviewers who mention a September content update were not impressed: "The new update is pretty much trash and leaves you wanting for tons of missing content." A smaller group says they enjoy the challenge.

Class balance that funnels everyone into one buildLow

Endgame reviewers say the party system breaks down late: tanks die whatever their gear, the Priest heals at the wrong moments, and the strongest setup is a single Ranger with the rest of the party removed. "All roads lead to solo ranger." Players want each class to have a viable late-game role.

Mandatory data collectionLow

A cluster of reviews from the first weeks objected to having to accept data collection and analytics to play: "The latest release requires data collection and analytics in order to play the game." The complaint fades from later reviews, and some of the players who raised it say they uninstalled.

Inventory and quality-of-life gapsLow

Players ask for auto-sell and auto-merge, loadouts, a cleaner respec than removing skill points one at a time, larger window scaling, and tooltips that don't hide the grid: "Browsing my inventory can be a bit difficult because the item descriptions cover nearby items". Free stash space also comes up in the DLC complaints.

Display bugs, platform limits and resource useLow

Some players saw a black box instead of a transparent window (one reviewer posted a fix through the Windows compatibility settings), and Linux and Steam Deck players report similar display trouble. Multi-monitor users mention scaling and placement trouble, a handful report memory growing over long sessions, and Mac players ask for a version.

3. The player conversation

Thousands of reviews are one line long, and jokes and memes are common among them. The longer reviews lean negative and carry most of the concrete complaints, while many short positive ones just say it is a nice thing to have running in the background. Some reviewers recommend the game and complain in the same breath, or keep a negative vote while admitting they still play.

Data collection and the black-box bug come up more among players with modest time in the game. The market, synthesis, paid heroes, class balance and the endgame are raised mostly by players with hundreds of hours, often people who left it running for weeks. Drop and ban complaints come from both groups.

The tone moved with the game's early problems. 53% of reviews written in launch week were positive, and the following week, when reviewers describe drop cuts, bot-driven lag and the first ban wave, fell to 42%, the low point. After the mid-June server update, weekly positive shares recovered and sat mostly between 68% and 78% through July and August. In September, as some reviews turned to the endgame and the new update, weeks ranged from 61% to 78%.

4. What the developers could do

  1. Restore reliable chest drops and make drop-rate upgrades count. Cut drops and chest timers are among the most frequent complaints, and players say they emptied the runes and pets they had built around finding loot.
  2. Stop items from disappearing and give players a way to recover them. Reviewers describe gear lost to the Cube, server cleanups, rollbacks and cloud sync, and they say that undermines a game built on collecting.
  3. Tune anti-cheat to ignore common background programs and offer a clear appeal with the profile mark removed. Reviewers who say they were banned without cheating name other games, Discord or common tools running alongside, and the permanent mark kept some unbanned players negative.
  4. Add endgame content and soften the synthesis odds with visible rates or a pity system. Veterans at the level cap describe walls they cannot pass, upgrade odds that feel rigged and nothing left to do.
  5. Fight market bots directly and make listing slots free rather than a paid pack. Players blame bots for the launch lag and the price collapse, and reviewers read the paid extra slots as charging for a fix to a problem the developers made.
  6. Rebalance classes so full parties beat a solo Ranger. Endgame players say every build converges on one class and that tanks and healers behave badly late in the game.
  7. Add inventory tools such as auto-sell, auto-merge, loadouts and a faster respec, plus more free stash space. Players describe constant gear sorting and ask for these tools.
  8. Make analytics optional and let the game keep progressing through short connection drops. The data-collection requirement drove some players away at launch, and some reviewers object to an idle game that must stay online.

Also on GameQ