The people who leave tabs open on purpose
Larchwoodgames started with a laptop that would not close. One of us had a Kittens Game colony in its third winter, another had a Cookie Clicker save approaching its next ascension, and neither wanted to shut the lid. Somewhere in that argument the idea for a site arrived: a place that reviews idle and incremental games the way they are actually played, slowly and over many days.
The genre is easy to dismiss from the outside. A button, a number, a few upgrades. But the best of these games are carefully tuned machines for curiosity. They decide exactly when to show you something new, and they trust you to wait for it. Writing about that well means playing long enough to see the second and third acts.
We are based in Canada, which helps more than you might think. Long winter evenings are excellent for watching a colony of kittens survive their own long winter, and a commute on the GO train is about the right length to check on a paperclip empire before getting off at Union.
We keep the shelf short on purpose. Six games, each played properly, each reviewed with specifics rather than adjectives. When a game changes, we go back. When readers tell us we missed something, we look again. The aim is a page you can trust before giving a game a month of your attention.
Days, not minutes
No review goes up until the game has run for at least a week on a fresh save. Idle design reveals itself late, so judging it early would mean judging the tutorial.
Name the mechanic
If we praise something, we tell you what it is: the wire budget, the winter catnip penalty, the portal perks. Vague enthusiasm helps nobody pick a game.
Change the score when the game changes
Many of these titles are maintained for years. When a patch reshapes the balance, the review and the four scores are revisited rather than left to drift.