Although there are half a million games on the Apple app store, the number of "genres" of games with fundamentally different gameplay is still relatively small. Starting a "new game" frequently means playing a game where you are already familiar with the general gameplay, and there are just details or story or graphics that are different from another game you already played before. Play enough games, and sometimes you can even observe how new genres of games evolve step by step.

One of this evolving genres is a new breed of so-called "idle games". They started out as jokes: The oldest idle game I know is Progress Quest, a game designed to parody the focus on endless progress by MMORPGs like Everquest. The next big step in the evolution was Cow Clicker, this time a satire on the effortless endless progress of Facebook games like Farm Ville. While these games had been designed to be "not a game" and show up how "stupid" a game with no challenge leading to endless progress is, the players didn't see it like that. To the big surprise of their creators, people played those "non-games" for the fun of it. Soon devs started to make idle games like Cookie Clicker, with no claim to satire. And then the industry started to take those idle games more and more seriously, even claiming that idle games are the youngest and most interesting video game genre.

And now I'm seeing a new generation of games that take the fundamental mechanics of idle games and turn them around by adding non-linear gameplay elements. For example there is Build Away!, "the world's best idle city simulator". One the one side it is a typical idle / clicker game, where you accumulate money even when idle / offline and gather money by just clicking on houses. But unlike similar games which only have one place to click on which is constantly upgraded, you now unlock more and more plots for more houses. And you need to make at least some actual decisions, as each plot can be built up *and* supplied with power to ever increasing degrees. And there are a bunch of gameplay elements thrown in that you'd expect from more typical Free2Play games, like the ability to buy gems and spend them on new blueprints and other sorts of bonuses. You can also link the game to Facebook and get bonuses from inviting Facebook friends.

So somehow the whole thing has come full circle, from a satire of a game providing a new gameplay element to a new genre of exactly the games that were supposed to be ridiculed.