AdVenture Capitalist

AdVenture Capitalist is an idle clicker in which you don't really run a company in the true sense - you just tap on lemonade stands, newsstands, or oil drilling and watch the numbers on the screen climb, while continuously investing the profit into more and more businesses until the player turns into the caricature tycoon from the game's cover art. Progress continues even offline, so it pays to check the phone only occasionally and set up further profit multipliers - back in 2014 this was still a relatively new concept that set the game apart from the turn-based and action titles filling the App Store and Google Play.

Hyper Hippo released AdVenture Capitalist at a time when the idle game genre was still taking shape, and the title became one of its defining examples - it showed that the loop of wait, collect, invest, put the phone to sleep could keep players glued to the screen just as effectively as action gameplay. The game is free to download, with monetization based on optional purchases that speed up progress but aren't required to keep playing through; ads appear more as a bonus offer than a forced interruption. Visually it's a simple, colorful caricature with minimal animation, which back then was also an advantage, since the game ran smoothly on a wide range of phones.

Controls are limited to tapping and purchases from a menu, without gestures or tilting, so AdVenture Capitalist can be played one-handed on the subway or during a break. It was precisely this low demand and the principle of gradually growing numbers that kicked off a wave of similar idle clickers that still flood mobile stores today, from simple clones to more complex business simulations with dozens of interconnected industries.

Why play it: Fans of the idle genre will appreciate it as one of the genre's founding titles, but anyone looking for deeper gameplay than repeated tapping and waiting will soon hit a ceiling.