AGRIVORE
- Hubert Spala
- May 8
- 5 min read
One of my not-so-secret guilty pleasures is idle games. Especially when they are married in a shed to a clicker, making for an extremely simple formula that somehow works on my primitive brain, jabbing some bits in the grey matter to make it sizzle in a pleasant way. I know that some could hardly even be granted the title of a game. I know it is exploiting some of the most baseline desires, but I can’t help it. If it’s all nicely wrapped up and makes me feel like my actions have some impact of number embiggening, I am game.
But it also is a dangerous line to walk. Due to how barebones an idler can be it is very easy to make it too… barren? Void of purpose? It’s a strange sentiment, I admit, since the whole purpose of the genre in broad strokes is stripping the layers of complexity to lay bare the baseline experience. After all, the whole premise is based on the fact, that most games – if you peel off the paint, struck down ornaments, dig into the guts of mechanics – are exactly that: Numbers going Up. Look at RPGs, for example? Experience, levelling stats, getting stronger weapons. Ending up with 9999 HP and doing attacks hitting for the same number. Idlers and clickers aim to rip off all that “pretense” and just let people enjoy the directness of it.
As I mentioned, though, this still needs to be somewhat gamified. After all, just having a button with a giant plus next to a number won’t be called a game and you’ll drop it in a jiffy. It won’t hold attention, won’t tantalize. The whole satisfaction lies in something more esoteric – presentation and intent still matter, somehow.
AGRIVORE triggered such little pondering. It is a very well-made game when it comes to its presentation. Polished old arcades vibes of the first era of gaming, with simple, radiant colors, black screen background and rapid jingles to keep you invested. It’s clean, it’s pure. And it still adds a bit of a more modern panache to the display, with lovely animations for every interaction, all moving objects and effects. In short, the game looks great and have a very hypnotic vibe to it – I had a hard time putting it down once the process kicks in, that initially slow grind that blossom into explosions of lights and rapidity.
The initial impression is damn great! You can see the potential. AGRIVORE isn’t a passive experience, so it’s not exactly an idler – you need to move your cursor around, use your primary weapon to cut down the crops to feed the ever-hungry king hanging out in the corner. As you gather coins from your goods you unlock progressively expanding upgrade tree, which increments on your powers. Spawn rate for crops, golden crops, damage, area of effect, hit rate, the usual set of numbers slowly but surely creep up after every rapid farming session until you become so powerful with your big numbers that you can clean the screen multiple times in a few seconds. That feels great!
Once or twice… Then, the repetition sets in, and it is not handled well.
I am sorry to say, but AGRIVORE fails the most crucial part of a good game of this genre blend – keeping the player invested with new bits and pieces. See, you slowly grind up to unlock bigger, more futuristic farming field with new crops, tools and weapons, but ultimately the core never shifts one bit. Sure, the flashing lights change, the game gets longer and longer with more crops to level up and bigger upgrades tree to fill up, but ultimately this is all just decoration, and the loop is adamantly stagnant, dreadfully repetitive with not a single step out of its tiny box.
It doesn’t matter much if you use a sword or a machine gun. It doesn’t change anything if your skills are sunspots or tractor zooming at Mach 4 through the screen. All you do, all the time, is zoomin’ your cursor around for a few rounds until your more passive abilities becomes so strong that you can either chill and let them do the work… or your cursor becomes so efficient that you can just swipe the screen to clean it up. And I think the biggest problem with this game is that as it expands in length, it doesn’t feel exciting, like you’re reaching some new heights – it merely feels tedious.
Like, oh look, now to max out the gems from a level to grind out the meta progression I just need to spend a few more minutes doing the same thing repeatedly. And since there is no true idleness here, no clicker bits that automatically ‘farm stuff’ for you, you can’t even tune away for a bit and hope for some progression to be achieved.
And so, AGRIVORE loses its steam rather quickly. Don’t get me wrong here – for a few hours I somewhat enjoyed my time with it. It looks great, and that drive to max things out and start over is there if you’re wired that way – which I certainly am! But if you have any hope for the formula to evolve, to shake, to show anything new to you after those few hours, you will be rather disappointed. I think my personal biggest peeve about this title is how useless the hungry king in the corner is! I sort of hoped that, at some point, he’d take on a more active role. Start tossing out dangers, devouring my crops, interject with my cursor or special tools. But nope, he’s purely decorative, just sitting there in the corner to hoover up the crops we reap. Oh well.
AGRIVORE is a great example of lack of substance. The whole game shows its bones early and shrugs off any notions of building up on itself in any meaningful way. The colors can change, the effects can be flashier, but ultimately you are chasing the same thing you did on your very first run, just with more clicks on buttons that mostly just increase the flashiness on screen. It’s a fine distractions, a solid thing to roll with whenever you need to kill time without engaging your brain… but if you’re looking for fun, engaging idlers or clickers, there are better games out there in the wide yonder.
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