Saturday Casual Gaming 303: Idle Pins on Kongregate

In Which I Am Very Sleepy

I'm typing this up at midnight because I'm 99% sure I'm going to either sleep in like a fool or wake up early to get things done, but either way, I am a sleepy birb.

When I'm tired but cannot sleep, I do one of two things: I watch videos on YouTube or I play idle games.

I have elected to play idle games, since for some reason (which I can't figure out) my computer has decided that a fairly good internet connection be damned, it's going to refuse to load YouTube videos. At all. It's horrifying. We're talking 144p.

Thankfully, you don't need a whole lot of crazy internet speeds or whatever to play a sweet little idle game like Idle Pins.

Idle Pins is a fairly new idle game on Kongregate. Made by publisher Arkshija and published on December 17, 2019, this game is a fun combination of RPG, idle game, sci-fi, and blatant copyright flummery. Seriously. There are a lot of references to other video games which the publisher is unlikely to have had a hand in. I'm not gonna complain about having my pins in the "Charmander" formation... or the one that looks like Sonic... or the one that looks like a Koopatroopa...

What I'm saying is that this game is very tongue-in-cheek. The story is pretty upfront about the fact that it doesn't really matter, but that's one of my big problems with it. When I logged on at the start of January, I had no idea what any of the mechanics were. You're given walls of text that make little to no sense and are left to do just... wait around and hope that something good happens. I'm still not 100% sure what pins go where in a formation!

You have pins, which are little buttons, and you're sending them to kill bad guys. You do this by loading them in formations (you start with "Noob", and it's trash, but you'll need it anyway) and hoping they don't die. Pins are... basically idle Pokemon. Except instead of kidnapping them and forcing them into combat, you either find or create them. This is also a little confusing at first, but here is my advice for if you're going to start playing this game:

1. If you have two pins that are the same (such as, a pair of "Alpha" pins), drag one on top of the other in your inventory. This will fuse them and make them stronger (two "Alpha" make one "Beta" for instance).
2. If it seems like you should be able to do something (crafting, tuning, etc) but you can't figure out how, just chill. You haven't found that ability yet.
3. Don't freak out about Tuning or the SynthLab. Tuning is a way to improve your pins with extra stats. SynthLab adds batteries to your pins and levels them up. You'll find batteries eventually, or you can deconstruct the higher tier pins you have (Gamma and up) for energy. Again, don't worry about this.
4. Bosses will kill you a lot early on.
5. You're not gonna keep the cool pins when you soft reset after Area 4 on the game map, so don't invest too heavily in them.

While the game did frontload a lot of conflicting or confusing info early on, I found that after I started to accumulate Formations and Unlockables (and even Event Items!), the game was better able to explain itself.

If you're looking for an idle game that asks you to practice some basic logic and reading comprehension, then definitely give Idle Pins a try. Now that I kind of understand what I'm doing, it's a lot of fun!!! Arkshija has done a great job here, and the fact that they're continually updating and tweaking the game tells me that they care about the game itself and how much fun you'll have playing it.

I'm going to bed now :)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC