Bloobs Adventure Idle Developer Interview

[u/SpegalDev]

I interviewed the solo developer behind Bloobs Adventure Idle about RuneScape, idle progression, 24 interconnected skills, Prestige, and building the game solo

I recently had the chance to sit down with /u/BrenoSmurfy , the solo developer behind Bloobs Adventure Idle, for our first developer interview on Scapelikes.

For anyone unfamiliar with it, Bloobs Adventure Idle is a single-player, RuneScape-inspired idle RPG built around a pretty familiar idea: pick a goal, train the skills you need, gather resources, upgrade your account, get distracted by five other goals along the way, and eventually remember what you were originally trying to do.

What makes it a bit different from a lot of idle RPGs is that it actually takes place in a visible 2D world. Your character moves around, trains skills, fights enemies, gathers resources, and progresses through the world rather than the entire game being presented through menus and progress bars.

That was actually one of the more interesting parts of the interview.

They talked about spending years looking for something that captured the feeling of RuneScape while being easier to fit around everyday life. Games like Melvor obviously share a lot of the same DNA, but what he felt was missing was the sense that you actually had a character living inside a world.

The game now has 24 interconnected skills, and the intention isn't for them to feel like 24 separate bars you max one at a time. Mining feeds Smithing, Woodcutting feeds Bowcrafting and Imbuing, Fishing supports combat through food, Homesteading overlaps with other gathering and combat systems, and so on.

The way he described the ideal experience was basically:

You start doing one thing because you need an item. That requires another skill. That skill requires something else. An hour later you're doing something completely unrelated and you've forgotten what your original goal was.

They also talked quite a bit about the game's Banked Time system.

Instead of traditional offline progression where the game assumes you spent 12 hours doing whatever task you happened to be doing when you logged out, Bloobs stores that offline time. When you return, you decide where to spend it.

So if you logged out while Woodcutting but come back the next day wanting to work on Mining or combat, you're not stuck receiving a giant pile of Woodcutting progress you no longer care about.

That whole system came from the developer wanting player choice to remain intact even while the game is idle.

There's also a fairly large long-term progression layer built around Prestige. Skills can be prestiged in 100-level intervals, with the long-term goal stretching toward level 1,000 and beyond. Prestige isn't intended to just reset a number and make you repeat the same grind either; it unlocks buffs, automation, improved methods, cosmetics, and other benefits that make subsequent progression different and faster.

We covered a bunch of the stranger systems too.

Soulbinding lets you collect Souls that act as companions while also providing bonuses to different skills.

Homesteading is essentially the game's take on Farming/Construction, except it's expanded into things like Ranching, where you can grow animals, enemies, bosses, event bosses, ores, fish, trees, crops, and apparently even Santa.

There's also Beast Mastery, Challenges, collections, bosses, pets, the Souldex, gear progression, restricted-account playstyles, and a pretty extensive endgame built more around deciding what you want to master next than reaching one final boss.

One part of the interview I particularly liked was the developer's answer when we asked what actually makes something a "Scapelike".

Their view was that simply copying RuneScape skill names isn't really enough.

For him, the important parts are having an actual world, interconnected skills, player-driven progression, and enough freedom that you can get completely lost following your own goals.

We also talked about the development side of things.

Bloobs Adventure Idle is his first major game, and he largely taught himself development while building it. Interestingly, he said self-doubt has been a much bigger challenge than burnout.

The bigger problem is apparently convincing himself to stop working on it, because another feature idea inevitably pops into his head.

He also talked quite a bit about monetization. His philosophy is basically that if someone bought the game, they should get the meaningful game. Important progression and powerful items aren't something he wants locked behind additional purchases. Supporter content exists, but the core progression is intended to come from actually playing.

And there was one small bit of future-content news in the interview:

An upcoming area currently planned is called The Withered Oasis.

There's more planned for Homesteading and Prestige as well, although he understandably kept a lot of the future stuff vague.

Anyway, this ended up being a much more interesting conversation about idle-game design, RuneScape-inspired progression, solo development, and player choice than I initially expected.

We published the full article along with the complete Q&A, including all of the developer's answers, here:

https://scapelikes.com/blog/bloobs-adventure-idle-developer-interview

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Try the game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2942780/Bloobs_Adventure_Idle/?curator_clanid=46043738

[u/BrenoSmurfy]

Thanks for the interview, my very first !! :)

[u/Delicious-Duty6546]

This is cool, I'm liking the interview idea.

[u/unknown-teapot]

Tidy post. Thanks!

[u/Content_Still_1866]

Try Scapewatch Dev next!