Midas Gold Plus

King Midas had the worst superpower for a person and the best one for an idle game. Midas Gold Plus hands you the golden touch, points you at a pile of stones, and asks how big an ancient empire you can tap into existence. Holyday Studios launched it on Steam in February 2017 as a free-to-play clicker with optional purchases, and it still holds a Mostly Positive record years on.

The premise leans into its own absurdity: you are invited to become the first capitalist of the ancient world, funding a mythical city called Midaeum out of transmuted rock. Medieval-styled graphics, a temple that pays diamonds for your donations, elder angels running the exchange. It is a genre game with a theme it actually commits to.

What the loop feels like

You tap a stone and it becomes gold coins, and the coins buy the buildings and heroes that turn tapping into a rumor. That's Midas Gold Plus.

Then the champions arrive: heroes whose unique abilities slot into one of three modes, Rage for clickers, Mana for idlers, Energy for hybrids, and suddenly the game is asking whether you want to play it or let it play itself. That's Midas Gold Plus.

Champions, raids and the Glove of Zeus

The systems stack wider than the clicker shell suggests. Champions toggle between Gold production and Knowledge accumulation, feeding the university research tree that multiplies everything. Timed raids, on the clock in stretches of a few hours, send your forces at rival cities for raid points, bonus loot and Void Crystals. Pet battles put a creature you have fed and levelled against revived dead in arena fights, with league ranks that boost the whole game.

The prestige layer comes through diamonds and Artifacts, and the community guide's shortlist tells you what matters: the Glove of Zeus is a built-in auto-clicker, the Staff of Artemis auto-casts your abilities, and the Boots of Hermes cut raid times. Those three convert the active game into an idle one, which is the correct direction of travel for everything in this genre.

Where it stumbles

Time has been unkind in the way it is unkind to all 2017 idlers. The community record now treats it as legacy: the loop is stagnant next to modern incrementals, the Unity-era interface feels primitive, and the late game flattens into a grind once the champion synergies stop compounding. Next to AdVenture Capitalist, its closest structural cousin, it trades polish for theme; next to Realm Grinder it is bare-bones. The free-to-play skeleton, with in-app purchases and trading cards, also dates it.

Playing it today

Both official versions are free: the Steam build for Windows and Mac, and the Kongregate browser version from the same studio. The community wiki and the Steam beginners guide still document the deeper systems.

The verdict

A 2017 time capsule that remains a genuinely decent first idle: warm theme, real champion variety, and a raid layer that rewards planning your logins. Veterans of the deep-system era will find it shallow. Newcomers could do far worse than a golden touch and a city to spend it on.