Off the AppStore: An Idle Nightmare is an atmospheric, incremental experience for your browser

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Welcome to Off The AppStore, a weekly feature with a twist. Namely, while these – like all the games we discuss here – are games you can play on your phone, they operate outside the realm of the two main ways to play: the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.

This means that alternative App Stores or APKs may require some work to download, or that games can simply be played in your phone’s browser. However, we will try to describe it in detail for each game. Anyway, read on to find a recent game or experience to play on Off The AppStore.

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You are an FBI officer investigating a series of disappearances clearly linked to a cult. You’re drawn to this sort of thing and – for some reason – you always work alone. This feels different though Is miscellaneous. An idle nightmare he will abandon you the moment you reach the crime scene and let you into his world… his world manifesting as a carefully constructed, atmospheric, incremental experience.

Of course, we already have some of the best incremental idle games here on mobile. One of our previous editors, Ric, was recently spotted walking past a no trespassing sign during a game Jajko companywhile games like Clicker Heroes and A Dark Room are widely known for their own reasons. That said, there’s a lot to like here, including a hidden second ending that requires a bit of thought but expands significantly from the first, more obvious gameplay.

The atmosphere is key here. I love the retro art style, even if it’s a little inconsistent between scenes, and the second ending requires a clever “machine eats machine” moment that often gets spoiled in incremental games – but here it’s delivered in a immaculate and balanced way.


Like last week’s mention, An Idle Nightmare can be played at Luca’s Pope’s Moida Mansion via your phone’s browser. I strongly recommend caution or even extreme caution with the browser you utilize. For example, Chrome has a temper when it comes to selecting interactive fields, but the area it’s likely to “catch for copying” is actually the key to the secondary ending, so don’t get too frustrated. There is no death or failure here, only varying degrees of success.

You can play Idle Nightmare free on Itch.Io.

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