Idle Island – City Builder on iOS or Idle Island – City Building Tycoon on Android is the latest city-building strategy simulation game from developer Robert Gryzbek. With an app portfolio of 8 games on both mobile platforms, the most popular games from this developer are Reactor – Idle Tycoon, ForgeCraft – Idle Tycoon, and Pocket Trader. Considering that most of his games, including the most popular ones are within the same genre as Idle Island, it’s no surprise to find this new idle builder game to gain a lot of popularity, downloads, and largely positive reviews in just a short span of time.
The game, like many idle building games, places very little pressure on anyone to spend so much time on it to progress making it a great game for people who don’t have much spare time to dedicate to mobile games and can likewise appeal to people who want to kill a few minutes from time to time. Certain elements of the game make it addictive enough though to get you hooked on it for longer durations. If you are looking for an enjoyable yet relaxing time-passer you can play with as little as a couple of minutes at a time, then check Idle Island out.
Idle Island puts you in the shoes of a city-building tycoon who aims to continuously expand his business across towns on his private island. Growing your estate basically revolves around building houses and stores as well as advertising your city and investing in various researches to boost profitability. As you can begin to continuously earn profits with the first few residents you can invite into your city, new ones can be easily added with a tap of a button. As it is, you would want to keep tapping and reel in as many people as you can to exponentially increase the profits you earn per second and that, more or less, basically become the primary addictive aspect of the game.
The first few minutes serve as the game’s tutorial as it takes you through the initial steps to take as you begin to populate the city and make it as much profitable as you can. Though the tutorial is quick and easy to learn and grasp, it won’t take you through everything you need to engage in later on. It’s nothing to worry about as Idle Island mechanics are pretty simple and as far as control schemes go, it offers an easy tap method for everything and has no complex control systems making it an easy game for players of all ages.
As there is hardly any pressure to rush into anything in the game, you can freely go about it at your own pace and freely spend how much time on it as you please. If you want to unlock and complete each city the fastest way you can, though, our Idle Island beginner’s guide can help you complete the requirements of each city and move on to the next one fast through the tips, cheats and strategies we will discuss.
1. Keep Tapping The Big Red Button
In every city, you start off by buying a house, a store, and a car to start things rolling but once you have all three; your primary focus should be building up the city’s population which can be done by tapping on the big red button at the bottom of your screen. As each click here sends a person into your town, you would want to tap on it as much as you can. You will notice that this button works like a meter that drains out as you continuously tap on it and once it goes empty, you won’t be able to invite as many people no matter how fast you tap. You won’t have to wait long, though, as the built-in meter replenishes fairly quickly and you can soon invite hordes of people into your town.
There are definitely a lot of tasks to do while playing the game as any city-building business certainly needs attention to be given to numerous activities, having to primarily focus on the big red button should not keep you from doing the other things you need to pay attention to further boost your profits. As your main objective in Idle Island is to earn as much profit as you can, having more people is just one of the many steps to take towards reaching your goal.
Ideally, you should smash tap the big red button and invite people into your current city to boost profits as much as you can. As the meter empties out, switch you focus on another activity, smash tap again, and move again to yet another activity making the invite activity seem like your in-between routine as you hop from one profit-boosting endeavour to the next.
2. Research As Much As You Can
The left-most icon just above the big red button at the bottom of your screen is the research icon. Once you click on it, you will see a variety of research options that will directly or indirectly lead to much higher profits. You will often have more than enough money to purchase multiple research items at a time and while you can click on the question mark just beside the research name to understand what it does better, it will be best to simply buy whatever you can knowing that you would want to raise the percentage boosts that each of the available research option provides.
Every research you pay for makes the next one a lot more expensive, but then as your profits will also be exponentially increased as you raise the research levels, the prices won’t seem as high a little later on. For best results though, research the cheapest ones first to get the most boost out of your current cash. IF you are playing to quickly complete the city objectives and move on the next bigger city, speed will be of the essence, so feel free to tap and hold on whichever research option is available and quickly drain your earnings on whichever available research item you can afford.
Be sure to remember scrolling down on the research items as more will become unlocked as you unlock more cities and progress through the game. As the research items are sequentially arranged from the cheapest down to the most expensive, feel free to mass purchase the top tier first.
Additionally, you can check out the epic research items you can unlock by clicking on the epic tab in the research menu. Epic researches provide permanent boosts but unlocking them will be based on luck as each item can only be claimed through parcels that take time to unlock.
3. Watch Video Ads For Great Rewards
As advertisements have become an integral part of free-to-play mobile games, everyone who has played mobile games before should already be familiar with the idea behind it and has accepted its value in the mobile gaming community. While some video ads that play out while you are playing the game can be somewhat intrusive and even annoying for some players, video ads that offer incentives to help you get through the game easier or faster are commonly appreciated.
In Idle Island, the initial video ad you should look forward to take advantage of can be activated by clicking on the x2 icon at the top right corner of your screen. Watching a 15 to 30-second video ad after clicking on this icon will double all profits you earn for 2 hours. Randomly, as you play the game as well, there will be several instances to see a “play” icon on the right side of your screen. Clicking on it will reveal the amount of money you can instantly gain after watching a short video ad. While you are continuously earning cash every second in the game, what these ads offer is well beyond what you can earn in a minute so watching a short ad, even a 30-second one, makes each one very much worth it. Lastly, going back into the game after being online for at least 2 hours will earn you some rewards and if you watch a short video ad when you log back in, you can also double the rewards you can get.
4. Pay Attention To All Icons That Appear At The Right
On top of the “play” icons that can pop up randomly as you play the game, random gift boxes as well as important info icons can appear and line up at the right side of your screen. Be sure to click on these as well at the soonest possible time. Info icons serve as reminders of what you may need to purchase like additional houses, stores, or cars. Although in most cases, you can purchase these prior to seeing the notifications, it is more advisable to primarily spend money on profit boosters through research. Gift boxes grant you instant rewards like cash, people, or even diamonds much like what you can receive for watching short video ads.
5. Accomplish Missions For Great Rewards
You can see a mission icon at the upper right side of your screen and it usually reflects a certain percentage which determines how close or far you are towards accomplishing a mission. These missions reward you with a lot of instant cash as well as diamonds and are mostly easy to accomplish. Simply click on it to view your current mission. You won’t be able to move on to the next one until you successfully complete the current mission so exert a bit of time and effort into accomplishing it at the soonest possible so you can get more rewards.
6. Tap On Those Planes Passing By
Once every 30 seconds or so, a plane will pass through your city following a random line. Whenever you catch a glimpse of one, be sure to click on it as it holds a variety of important rewards. You can instantly receive a huge amount of cash from the packages that it drops and while that can be a huge help, cash is the most common drop it can give you. These planes can reward you with gems, boosters, and most important of all, parcels that contain a variety of rewards including epic research items.
7. Unlock Parcels And Use Boosters
Just beside the research icon, you can see two other icons that when clicked on, can help improve your gameplay and earn you more profits by the second. These are the boosters and parcels icons that may contain some valuable items you have collected while playing the game. Boosters may come in the form of profit boosts, instant cash, or even instant people but you will most likely only obtain profit boosts as you play and will have the option to purchase any of these with hard-earned gems. Parcels, on the other hand, contain a variety of rewards like cash and gems but will always include an epic research item that will permanently boost your profitability.
For the boosts, be sure to consume profit boosters when you are up to playing the game for the duration of the boost and most especially if it becomes your current mission. Any double reward for the same amount of effort is great and this can also work at the same time with the boost you gain from watching video ads.
With regard to parcels, you can only stack up to four packages at a time. What you would want is to always ensure that a package is in the process of opening up. As it takes hours to do so, you can watch a short video ad to cut down the waiting time by 30 minutes. Keep in mind as well that you can do so continuously until you finally cut down the waiting time to zero and unlock the package. Common parcels take 2 full hours to unlock while rare ones take 4 hours. You can simply watch a short video ad marathon to quickly empty your parcels out so you can stack up on new ones and enjoy the benefits of having better boosts from epic researches you have unlocked.
That is all we have for now on our Idle Island beginner’s guide. We hope that you picked up a few things from the tips and strategies we shared with you and that you enjoyed reading our guide as well. If you know of some additional tips and strategies for this game and would like to share it with us and our readers, feel free to leave us a message in the comment area!