Screeps: World

Screeps: World is the programming MMO. Screeps, LLC shipped it in November 2016 for Windows, Mac and Linux with a promise no other idle game makes: you write JavaScript, that code operates your colony twenty-four hours a day in a persistent online world shared with everyone else, and then you go to bed while your functions grind, expand and occasionally start wars without you. The genre flag here is honest: it is an always-on automation sandbox rather than a clicker, and CPU-tick pacing is its idle mechanic.

What the loop feels like

The first scene is an editor. You sketch a harvester routine, upload it, and watch a little code-driven unit trundle to a source, mine energy, and haul it home. Then you write the upgrader that spends that energy levelling your room, and the defender that reacts when neighbors probe your borders.

The second scene is the morning after. Your console log reads like a shift report: harvests ticked, the room leveled, a hostile creep repelled by a function you barely remember writing. That’s Screeps: World.

Where it stumbles

Honest gaps first: this entry is built from store and project facts rather than deep community research, so the texture of late-game alliance politics is under-documented here. What is structural rather than speculative: the game demands real programming ability, so the wall for non-coders is absolute, and it is a paid title with an optional subscription model, including CPU-unlock purchases, on top of the one-time price. The pacing is also genuinely slow; players expecting session-length loops will find a strategy hobby instead.

Playing it today

It is a one-time purchase on Steam from Screeps, LLC, with optional CPU unlocks, and the turn-based PvP spinoff Screeps: Arena carries the same code-first idea into battles. For automation pleasure without the compiler, Universal Paperclips and Cookie Clicker scratch the adjacent itch.

The verdict

For programmers, the deepest idle ever made: your code is the prestige layer, the economy, and the war. A landmark for anyone who ever wanted their job to play the game for them.