With more or less 500,000 games available on mobile platforms, it’s hard to imagine how any new or upcoming games can provide a unique experience for players. Though almost every game qualifies to be different from all others with its mix of offerings and designs, gamers who have played plenty of mobile titles before will naturally have a feeling that they have already seen everything. To some extent, experienced and veteran gamers will look at or play a mobile game and think to themselves that it is comparable to one or even a couple of titles they previously played.
HyperBeard’s Idle Pocket Planet is an idle clicker game, that promises to provide a unique adventure to even experienced and veteran mobile players. Idle Pocket Planet lets you grow life on unique and diminutive planets, continuously harvesting resources from it as you expand your grasp across the mysterious galaxy awaiting discovery and colonization. You can only move forward as your settlements and ships never tire of gathering resources and there will never be any instances of setbacks or losses.
Like any idle clicker game, Idle Pocket Planet is as easy and simple as can be and even complete beginners are sure to pick it up and enjoy it without any trouble at all. Progression is practically a constant although idle earnings will only be available for a limited time. Similar to other idle clicker games as well, the more active you are tending to your pocket planets, the faster your resources will grow and the faster you can move on to the next planet for colonization.
In addition to time spent on your little planets and colonies and active engagement in expansions and developments, mastering basic concepts and employing basic strategies pave the way toward a more efficient approach to growth and expansion. If you have just dived into the game or are about to, our Idle Pocket Planet Guide comes with useful tips and strategies to build the biggest and most advanced empire across the galaxy!
1. Keep Spending Resources
If Idle Pocket Planet is the first idle clicker game you have played, then it is very important to know the core mechanics that set it apart from other game genres. For just about all other games, it is almost very natural to have a prudent approach toward utilizing currencies. Sometimes, it even gets to a point where you would opt to save your basic currencies for later even if the item you wish to spend it on can make the next stages of your adventure a lot easier.
However, this is usually the result of having better, yet more expensive items to spend money or resources on at a later time and it becomes a risk to spend the money you have as you will most likely need them sooner or later.
Idle clicker games, especially simulation types, completely contradict this notion. As you will continuously earn income or the most basic currency in any idle clicker game, you should hardly have any reason to keep saving them. More so, spending your resources in idle clicker games should not be treated as expenses but rather as investments. This is because every bit of currency you use will effectively increase earnings over time.
Your expenditures in Idle Pocket Planet can be classified into 2 categories: upgrades, and spawns. Although critters spawn over time and you can also tap to have them generate faster, you can spend some asteroids to instantly spawn basic critters or even ones on higher upgrade levels. At this point, having close to zero asteroids will be your basic objective relative to resource management. For the most part, this means that whatever amount of it you have left should not be enough to invest in anything.
2. Invest In Asteroids
Having the idea and making a habit of spending your asteroids or idle earnings in Idle Pocket Planet stands as the basic foundation of your strategy to increase idle income. As a reduction of asteroids can only mean a purchase of an upgrade or a critter, every bit of it you spend is a move towards getting it back at a much faster pace and getting more asteroids in the process.
As much as this is the superior approach in comparison with allowing your asteroids to stand idle, setting prioritizations as to how you spend this currency is an even better strategy.
Just like in any other idle clicker sim game, expenditures and investments in Idle Pocket Planet can also be classified into their relative costs. Some investment options are relatively cheap while others are normally beyond what you can readily afford and may require some time and some grinding for you to purchase.
In Idle Pocket Planet, purchasing critters, most especially the more basic ones, is your cheapest investment choice. The trio of upgrade options available to you starts as being expensive and each succeeding purchase will exponentially be costlier.
The upgrades can be accessed via the lightning icon at the lower left side of the screen. There are only 3 upgrades available but their relative costs will take some time before you can purchase one after another. We consider all 3 upgrade options to be of equal importance. Prioritization, therefore, should be modeled after each upgrade’s relative affordability.
First up is the Collector upgrade, which increases the time you can collect asteroids. Note that you always collect asteroids using the critters you have on the planet. The collection continues even if you are offline and away from the game and this is when the time limit applies. You would want to extend the duration of collection when you are offline so that you will always return to the game with a bigger bulk of asteroids to spend.
The next upgrade option is Spawning Time. Spawning Time determines how sooner will a new critter be generated on your planet. Although you can tap on the Slime icon at the bottom center of the screen to speed up the spawn time of critters, it only reduces the time by 1 second with each tap. Upgrading Spawning Time not just enables critters to be spawned faster when you are idle, but it also ultimately enables you to spawn critters manually with fewer taps on your device’s screen.
Last, but not least, is the Good Luck upgrade, which is a fairly recent addition to the game. The Good Luck Upgrade increases the chance of getting an upgraded critter from spawning, whether you obtained them idly or while tapping the spawn icon. This upgrade does not just make it possible to spawn a next-level critter spawn but each upgrade also increases the upgrade level of critters it can randomly spawn.
The “+” icon at the lower right side of your screen leads to where you can purchase critters. You can purchase critters using asteroids or stars, but we recommend saving the latter for more important purchases. You probably might think that you can do away without spending asteroids on critters as you can spawn them anyway, and you can but this feature enables you to speed up progression with more critters to merge.
The range of critters you can purchase and instantly spawn grows broader the more critters you unlock. The highest upgrade level of the critter you can purchase will naturally be a few levels lower than the highest grade critter you have deployed but will still be very helpful just the same.
Although we generally recommend purchasing from the cheapest to the most expensive option, we recommend purchasing the best critter you can afford first. The exception to this is if you can readily afford an upgrade or are very close to earning enough Asteroids to do so. So long as the idle asteroids you have is still sufficient to purchase some critters, consider making the purchase.
The potential apprehension you may have concerning this strategy is that you may never be able to afford the bigger purchases if you continue spending idle currencies as they come. However, Idle Pocket Planet is designed in such a way that taking some time off away from the game yields you huge sums of idle earnings. As an effect, you are very likely to come back to your virtual pet planets with an abundance of asteroids waiting for you. This will ultimately be the best time to invest in those huge upgrades.
3. Keep Spawning And Waking Up Critters
Idle Pocket Planet is designed in that you will continue to earn Asteroids over time after the tutorial. Earnings come from the critters you have deployed on your planets as a simplified way of showing how each critter gathers resources from that planet.
The most basic critter earns you 1 Asteroid every second and merging the critter to have a next-level one will earn you more. As each higher-level critter you produce as a result of merging increases its Asteroid outputs significantly, it is a given that you should keep on merging similar ones as often as you can.
Even without spending a single Asteroid on purchasing upgrades or instantly spawning critters, the critters you have will already contribute to increasing your earnings over time. Tapping on the spawn icon at the bottom center of the screen is free and practically limitless, so you have an unlimited supply of critters that work for you.
One of the limitations to this is the limited space on the small planet that critters occupy. The planet’s surface can only hold about 18 critters and once there are no open spaces for new ones to spawn in, the auto-spawn feature will no longer be active. It does not even take long for this to happen if you are not merging critters as spawning new ones only takes a few seconds, fewer even if you have invested in the Spawning Time upgrade.
Another point to consider is that the critters you spawn will start like slime creatures. At this stage, these critters will not be able to contribute to earnings. Just like in the tutorial, you still have to tap on the jelly creatures to wake them up. Once awake, they will earn currencies idly and you can also start merging them to obtain higher-grade critters.
4. Keep Tabs On All Unlocked Planets
One solid indication of progress in Idle Pocket Planet is the planets you unlock beyond the first in your long-term goal of reaching the source of the signal you picked up at the start of your adventure. While most of the earlier critters you uncover, as a result of merging similar ones, are largely on the surface of the planet, you will soon have some critters hover on the stratosphere and go farther away from the planet and closer to space.
Once you have merged the highest-grade critter for the planet, merging 2 of those creatures will in turn yield your starting critter for the next planet. This is a cyclical gameplay mechanic that adds to the long yet addictive elements of Idle Pocket Planet. If it takes you a while to complete the evolution list of critters on the first planet, expect it to take folds longer to accomplish that on every other succeeding planet.
In addition to spending some Asteroids to purchase and spawn additionally evolved critters, it is also recommended to smash tap the Spawn button at the bottom of the screen when you have the chance. Every new critter you spawn out of your effort matters and even a full minute of doing so contributes a lot to your progression. It is a lot easier to keep tabs on open surface spaces when you only have the first planet available but once you have progressed enough to access the other planets, you might occasionally forget about tending to the other planets.
After you unlock the second planet, it will initially take some time to populate that planet with different critters. Only the first planet will spawn critters and the initial set of critters on the new planet will only be a product of merging the top critter of the other planet. However, as more and more critters become available to you, you can purchase higher-grade critters that can be deployed on the newer planets.
As you may be busy spawning and merging planets on the starting planet, you may forget about merging some more on the newer planet. Be sure to make it a habit of visiting all the unlocked planets you have either by swiping up and down on the screen or clicking the planet icons at the upper right side of the screen. Keep in mind that every merged critter is better than the sum of its parts in terms of generating Asteroids.
5. Claim Rocket Finds As Often As Possible
Stars serve as the premium currency in Idle Pocket Planet and you expectedly cannot earn them as easily as Asteroids. For this reason, you would want to ensure that you are spending every star you have on the best possible choices and likewise grab as many opportunities as you can to earn more of them. Idle Pocket Planet provides plenty of opportunities to grab some free stars but you will typically only receive 1 or 2 of them at a time.
As a premium currency, stars can be used to purchase critters from the “+” feature. Stars can also be used to cut down waiting times on rocket arrivals and will later be needed for upgrades. While all these uses are certainly almost equally attractive we consider investing stars first in having additional rockets. You can access the rocket feature via its icon at the bottom of the screen.
You will start with just a single rocket to perform some explorations and return with a random gift for you. Additional rockets can be purchased for 20 and 40 stars, respectively. All 3 rockets will then scour the vast galaxy in search of bounties to take back.
Once launched, each rocket will take time to return and the time it will take stretches further with almost every trip. You can speed up and eliminate the waiting time by spending stars or playing video ads and given that stars will have other important uses later on; we recommend either waiting or playing the 5 to a 30-minute video ad. Be sure to make a habit out of claiming rewards as often as possible from each rocket as every return can net you a huge sum of Asteroids, some stars, or even collectible items to decorate the hub of your ship with.
6. Play The Mini-Game For Extra Rewards
There is certainly no shortage of ways for you to boost your planets’ growth and explorations’ development in Idle Pocket Planet. Despite uncovering new creatures and inhabiting new planets from time to time, the grind for Asteroids and Stars can become somewhat monotonous the farther your adventure goes.
Idle Pocket Planet also has a notable collections aspect where you get to decorate your ship’s cockpit with various items that your rocket can randomly collect from its ventures, adding further to the excitement and expectations of seeing something new every once in a while. As your adventure goes deeper, you can expect to experience a bit of monotony given the time it takes for developments to happen.
To take a break from the investments and manual taps that you regularly do in the course of expanding your colony, Idle Pocket Planet provides a simple yet engaging min game. You can access this through the game controller icon on the pull-up menu at the lower left side of your screen. The objective of the mini-game is to catch falling Asteroids and Stars on your little planet using a claw that you can fully rotate around the planet.
To control the claw, simply tap and hold anywhere on the right side of your screen to move it clockwise, and tap and hold on the left side for a counter-clockwise spin. Falling Asteroids and Stars have different speeds but it is fairly easy to catch some of them. Although your little planet will have lumps on it whenever an Asteroid crashes into its surface, it will never end your run.
The only way to end the mini-game is to press the X button at the bottom of the screen. Whatever amount you receive at the end of the run can also be doubled by playing a short video ad.
7. Take Advantage Of Every Ad Offer
Casual and hyper-casual mobile games have been known to almost always contain video ads. While there are still plenty of free-to-play mobile games that can do well without including ads in their package, those are the types of games that dwell heavily or entirely on micro transactions and premium services.
On the other hand, casual and hyper-casual games may also have such offerings but the basic gameplay will not have you rely on having to spend real money to enjoy the game fully, making it less likely that you will be inclined to spend real money to spend on virtual shops and stores.
As there are still players who get annoyed or distracted by the existence of video ads in the free mobile games they play, it becomes important to understand that these video ads exist to ensure that the game will always be available for free for everyone to enjoy as well as have the means for its developers to sustain updates and fixes moving forward.
Idle Pocket Planet has its share of video ads but none randomly play on your adventures. Every video ad you will see is completely voluntary and forms part of the game’s ad campaign. Surely enough, you can make good progress in your explorations and planetary development without ever having to see a single video ad but progression can be tremendously increased with the help of these ad boosts.
One of the ad boosts we certainly appreciate is the idle earnings you receive from the Collector. As we mentioned earlier, the Collector enables you to continuously earn Asteroids while you are offline and away from the game for a given period depends on the Collector’s current upgrade level. The huge sum of earnings can be doubled all at the cheap cost of playing a short video ad. While the huge sum of Asteroids on its own may be enticing enough as it can help you purchase an expensive upgrade or a few upgraded critters.
As stars are of great value in the world of Idle Pocket Planet, be sure to catch the shooting star that randomly passes by your screen. Tapping on it and watching the 5 to 30-second video ad will earn you 2 to 3 stars afterward. Stars can be obtained in a variety of ways but given that you will always need more stars than what you have, we recommend grabbing every opportunity to rake in some extras.
Like shooting stars, a purple wormhole or portal of sorts can also randomly appear above your planet. This portal will have a play button at its center, indicating an ad boost waiting to be triggered. If you tap on the play button, you can earn a huge sum of Asteroids as a reward.
There is an in-game shop that you can access via the cart icon you can pull up from the lower left side of your screen. While most of the store’s contents require real money to purchase, there are free stars you can claim if you choose to play a video ad for them. After doing so, this freebie will have an 8-hour cooldown period to be available again.
Critters that you spawn from the “+” feature are purchased using either Asteroids or Stars. However, the third and final option to instantly have upgraded critters is to play a video ad for them. For the most part, we only consider patronizing ads for this if the free critter is the best one to get. However, feel free to play as many of the ad boosts here to spawn free critters one after another. This will be the more efficient approach towards having upgraded critters compared to smash-tapping the spawn button for basic critters and then merging them.
We mentioned earlier that you can cut down time for rockets to bring you rewards by playing a short video ad. Additionally, the Asteroids and Stars you receive from the rocket explorations can sometimes be doubled with an ad offer before you claim the rewards.
Idle Pocket Planet certainly still holds plenty of potential surprises coming in future updates but for now, this is where we wrap up our Idle Pocket Planet Guide. We hope that you have learned plenty from the tips and tricks we shared and that you enjoyed reading our article as well. If you happen to venture anywhere beyond what we have in Idle Pocket Planet and have your discoveries to share, then feel free to drop us a line!