Idler is a simple game where you invest coins to unlock and upgrade "producers" that generate coins over time. It demostrates the archetypes of player progression with timers, economy, and social features.

The project is a testing ground for Metaplay features, designed as a bare-bones live-service example that showcases the platform's capabilities in a simple idle game context. It demonstrates how producers, leagues, events, in-game purchases, analytics, party systems, and custom dashboards work together in a unified implementation. Internally, Idler is one of our kitchen-sink playgrounds for testing new features and patterns as we develop them.

As a reference project, Idler provides you with concrete examples of how to implement common live-service features using Metaplay's architecture. The game mechanics are intentionally overly simple to focus on demonstrating the technical integration patterns.

Key Takeaways

Idler demonstrates how Metaplay's architecture enables you to build a feature-rich live-service game with cheat-proof client-server synchronization and advanced features commonly seen on top-grossing games. The game's core loop is playable in offline-mode in the Unity editor for quick iteration times outside of social features.

Idler's Specific Design Choices

The implementation includes several game-specific systems that demonstrate common live-service patterns:

• Producer economy system - Simple idle mechanics with upgradeable producers that generate currency over time, showing basic economic progression loops.
• League integration - Competitive scoring based on player actions, demonstrating how to implement leaderboards and seasonal competitions.
• Guild and party systems - Social features for player interaction, showcasing multiplayer entity patterns and group management.
• Event system - Time-limited and segment-targeted events that modify game behavior, illustrating how to run LiveOps campaigns.
• Analytics integration - Custom analytics events for monitoring player behavior and game balance.
• In-game purchases - In-app purchases with server-side validation and analytics tracking.
• Bot clients - Simple bot clients that simulate player actions for testing and development.

...and much more. These systems are intentionally simplified to serve as reference implementations rather than complex game designs.

How to Explore?

Start by running the Idler sample locally to experience the complete client-server-dashboard workflow.

Next, examine the key implementation areas:

• PlayerModel (Assets/SharedCode/Player/) - Core game logic and state management
• Game configs (Assets/SharedCode/Config/) - Data-driven configuration patterns
• Dashboard extensions (Backend/Dashboard/src/) - Custom admin interface components
• Server logic (Backend/Server/) - Backend systems and entity management

Due to the kitchen-sink nature of Idler, the project structure is not designed for clean separation of features. For a more structed aproach to individual implementations, please consult the feature cookbooks in our documentation while using Idler as a reference implementation.

Usage in your own project

Idler serves as a reference implementation that you can adapt for your own game. The key patterns to consider:

• Client-server synchronization - Use the shared PlayerModel approach for deterministic game logic
• Config-driven design - Follow the game config pattern for designer-controlled content
• Dashboard customization - Extend the admin interface with game-specific management tools
• Testing framework - Adapt the unit and system test structure for your own game logic

The code demonstrates best practices for organizing a Metaplay project and implementing common live-service features. You can extract specific components or use the overall structure as a template for your own implementation.

Setup Instructions

1. Extract the Idler sample from the Metaplay SDK package available in the developer portal downloads archive
2. Install the Metaplay CLI
3. Navigate to the Idler directory and run metaplay dev server
4. Access the dashboard at localhost:5550
5. Optionally run bot clients with metaplay dev botclient -- -MaxBots=10

The server will start with default configurations and you can immediately begin exploring the game systems and dashboard features.