Idle Mine is an Idle Game in Adobe Flash by Crovie released in 2013. The game's goal is mining tough and valuable ores to earn money which can be used to buy upgrades. Additionally, you have a chance to earn gems which can be spent for a chance to upgrade your pickaxe at the blacksmith.
The game's legacy is continued in a Fan Remake of sorts called Idle Mine Remix which has its own page.
This game provides examples of:
- Autosave: The game saves automatically every minute or so, or when you get a better pickaxe.
- The Blacksmith: The only character in the game you visit is the blacksmith, who can craft a new pickaxe for you at the cost of 3^x gems (with x dependent on how much you've upgraded Gem Waster, starting from 0). Most of the time, he'll just make duds, though (but at least he may salvage the gems to try again).
- Damage Reduction: Ores have a defense stat that goes up with each new one. The stat's number determines how much damage is ignored from each hit, and if it's high enough, it becomes impossible to idle through the ore or even progress at all.
- Final Boss: The Hellstone's the last ore you have to destroy. Later ores are just Hellstone at a higher level, though the game caps it at Hellstone Lv. 2237 to prevent glitches from integer overflow.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Putting the game in widescreen mode (easily accesible in a Flash game emulator) shows a weird icon in the upgrade menu that cycles through all other icons. Hovering over it or clicking it may crash the game.
- No Plot? No Problem!: No plot is provided in the game for why you're mining.
- No-Sell: Strong enough ores will take no damage from your axe if their defense is higher than your power.
- Palette Swap: There are only about four unique ore design types in the game. Most of them are just a design you have previously seen with a different color or some small element.
- Toilet Humor: The very first ore you have to mine is poo. And yes, it makes money and can have gems.
- Unobtainium: Mid- and late-game ores, which are typically very valuable and hard to mine, which include Orbium, Novalite, Adamantium, and the Trope Namer (which is displayed as the game's regular ore graphic in broken lines) slightly later.
