Between Adventures IDLE: the demo was better, and the players all say so

There is a scenario I rarely see this clearly: a demo people like, a game that launches, and a community that unanimously prefers the demo.

That is what is happening to Between Adventures IDLE, and the problem is neither content nor technology. It is pacing.

What the game does well

Start with what deserves to exist, because there are real qualities here.

You see the fights. That is the opening promise and it is kept: unlike idle games that display text logs, here every sword swing, arrow and spell is animated in pixel art. You manage status effects, tactical shielding and consumables, and there are proper dungeon bosses.

Eleven skills to train, across gathering, crafting and magical disciplines: mining, gathering, woodcutting, fishing, blacksmithing, crafting, cooking, alchemy, arcane school, upgrade and enchantment. You can run one gathering task and one crafting task at the same time, the kind of convenience that matters enormously in this genre.

An interconnected talent tree, with passive perks from gathering speed to double drop chances, and a multi-tier rarity system for crafted equipment.

And a clear position on monetisation, stated plainly on the store page: no microtransactions, no pay-to-win, no forced ads. You buy once. In a genre riddled with shops, that deserves saluting.

Full offline progression is there too, which is the baseline for a game like this.

The problem, and it is unanimous

The game has 30 positive reviews out of 44, placing it at a mixed rating, and the criticisms all tell the same story.

Progression was slowed considerably compared with the demo. Experience climbs far more slowly. One player writes that you should play this game the way you pass on an heirloom, with your grandchildren in mind.

Unlocks changed nature. In the demo, features opened by completing quests. In the release, you have to buy them from a merchant, and gold comes in much more slowly than quests were finished.

And an equipment tier disappeared. The upgraded versions of wooden gear no longer exist, leaving a gap between basic wood and copper, which requires mining level ten. Several players describe the same wall in the same place.

A Japanese player sums it up without malice: it resembles Melvor Idle, it is clearly not finished, and you can leave it running alongside something else while hoping it improves.

What it is worth anyway

Keep the proportions. The game is in early access, it costs 6.92 euros, it is technically clean and runs well, which even its detractors acknowledge. It has nearly nine hundred concurrent players the day after release, which is not nothing for a game this size.

And rebalancing a curve is exactly the kind of correction early access exists for, provided the studio listens. Loop Forge is published by Rogue Duck Interactive and Gamersky Games, the same pair behind other incrementals, and the first update will tell us everything.

So my position is simple: the skeleton is good, the quality-of-life work is there, the commitment on monetisation is sincere. But as things stand you are buying a game whose best version was free a month ago, and you can feel it.

Stuck at the same copper wall as everyone else? We compare patience counters on the InsertCoins Discord.