This document discusses strategies for designing successful idle games and limited time events within those games. It provides examples from Kongregate's idle games AdVenture Capitalist, Pocket Politics, and Office Space to illustrate design patterns around core gameplay loops, unlock systems, offline progression, events, leaderboards, character systems, and monetization strategies that increased player engagement and spending. Overall, the document advocates for event designs that introduce new puzzles and strategic options to motivate player behavior and drive lifts in key performance indicators.

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Clicker Cadences
Limited Time Event Design in Idle Games
Drew Levin
Lead Product Manager
USA 2018

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Kongregate
Web Platform
100,000+ Uploaded Games
F2P Publisher
30+ Games
140M+ Downloads
Premium Publisher
Mobile, Steam and Consoles

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Kongregate's Idle Games
Over the years
20172015 2016

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Exponential GrowthOffline Progression
Reset Mechanics
Key Components of Idle Games

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KPIs by Genre
Kongregate portfolio ranges
Genre # of games d1 d7 d30 arpdau 180 day LTV
CCG/RPG 7+ 35% 10% 3% $0.30-$1.00 $1.50-$5.00
RTS 4 40% 20% 10% $0.10-$0.20 $1.25-$3.50
Idle 5+ 45% 25% 15% $0.08 $1.50
Runner 5 35% 8% 1% $0.03 $0.10
Arcade 3 20% 5% 1% < $0.01 $0.02

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AdVenture Capitalist Core Loop
Buy Upgrades
Reset Buy investments
Hit Unlock
milestones
Wait
Buy managers
to autotap
Tap on investments

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Unlocks create shifting contexts
Strategy in AdVenture Capitalist

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Events as Time-Constrained Puzzles

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Top Purchases in AdVenture Capitalist

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Time Warps drive event spend

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Event lift: ARPDAU

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Ad Revenue adds up
70%of AdCap revenue comes from ads

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Strong ad implementation is essential
- Valuable
- Many per session

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Event lift: ad engagement
Daily ad views per viewer

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AdCap Lets Players Strategize
New puzzles to explore
and solve
Unlocks system complexity

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- Lobbies = investments
- Progress bar style
- Make the big number go up
Pocket Politics

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- Creates clear goals
- Less needing to figure it out
Pocket Politics Leveling System

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- Activity required to progress
- Capped offline progression
Pocket Politics Tap-to-Level

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Event lift: session length
Capped offline progression drives loss aversion

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Leaderboards in Events

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Event lift: ARPDAU
Competition is a strong motivator

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Pocket Politics Lets Players Compete
People love being the best
Leaderboards

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Office Space

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- Rarity
- Upgradability
- Placement matters
- Unique abilities
Office Space Characters

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- Impact other floors
- Impact each other
- Different modes of impact (cost,
speed, output)
- Different modes of value scaling
Characters as Strategic Vectors

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Characters in Events
- Restrictions
- Rewards

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Overall lift: ARPDAU
Event design allows characters to reliably drive interest; rarity spikes sales.

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Office Space Lets Players Discover New Strategies
Player-directed strategic
gameplay axis
Character system

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Key Motivators

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Thank you
@KongregateDevs
blog.kongregate.com