Idle Quest

TopCog's 2015 idle RPG asks almost nothing of you: assemble a party of heroes, and in Idle Quest they quest, level and loot autonomously while you steer the build from behind the curtain. It was the studio's early entry in the genre, listed complete in the r/incremental_games wiki, and a decade later its iOS listing is still live and free.

What the loop feels like

The party marches without you, which is the entire design: heroes fight through quests on autopilot, XP accrues, and loot drops pile up in the background of your day while you are elsewhere. Your attention is spent not on the battles but on the decisions between them, equipping drops, steering the party's growth, and choosing when the accumulated gear justifies a change of plan. That's Idle Quest.

The loop underneath is the classic loot-RPG economy: runs produce loot, loot produces power, and power produces faster runs, an automation loop the game closes for you. You check in, audit the haul, adjust, and leave it running, which is exactly the contract a party-based idle signs. Nothing about the game demands your presence, and that was the point in 2015: an RPG that respects the fact you have other things to do. That's Idle Quest.

How it actually works

The named systems are idle progression, the loot-RPG economy, and automation. That is the honest extent of what the surviving research documents: a party of heroes that quests, levels and loots on its own, with the player as build-director. There is no surviving design deep-dive to cite, so the fine texture of the build system is left to the game itself rather than reconstructed here.

Where it stumbles

This entry was rewritten from a lean research file without a dedicated criticism pass, so this section stays broad rather than invented. The verifiable problem is distribution: the Google Play listing 404s, so Android is store-dead and the game survives only on iOS, with mirrors of the APK era outside official channels. As a 2015 release it predates the modern prestige-heavy design language, and its simplicity is both the charm and the ceiling.

Playing it today

Free on iOS (App Store listing verified live, id949933004), with the official icon and store screenshots preserved in this entry. The Android twin (com.topcog.idlequest.android) is delisted, so this entry records both halves of its availability honestly. If the autopilot-party idea appeals, Hero Tale runs a newer take on heroes who fight for themselves, and Progress Game covers the same check-in-and-grow rhythm.

The verdict

A foundational TopCog idle: simple, generous, and still on the App Store a decade later, with its Android half preserved only in mirrors. Play it on iOS or not at all.