Review: Ropuka’s Idle Island is adorable, but does it go too far in the idling direction?

Ropuka’s Idle Island is a fun little idle game that sits on a tiny island at the bottom of your screen. It’s inhabited by, Ropuka, a grass-cutting frog. He’ll run around cutting grass for you and you’ll be able to gather coins and use grass clippings to buy better stats or decorations.

Ropuka’s Idle Island: Please wait while the progress is loading

Here’s the thing with Ropuka’s Idle Island; it’s an accurate title, but it might be a smidge too accurate. There’s an island that belongs to Ropuka and all you do is idle on it. 10 out of 10 for picking a great name, but an 7 out of 10 when it comes to gameplay.

I’ve had Ropuka’s Idle Island open for 142 hours now and I feel like I haven’t really done anything. This is a literal waiting game. Ropuka runs around the island cutting grass, but the rate at which he does it is almost grueling.

You’ll wait hours just to come back and spend a minute upgrading things and then leave again. There’s no interactivity beyond picking what your island looks like, unlike in the idle game My Little Life which lets you build your domicile from the ground up. So, while it’s fun to have a little companion on your home screen, you literally have to leave the game open all the time if you want to see any progress.

Where I’m sitting here, I’m only 32% into the collectibles and that’s with having the game open non-stop for over 5 days. Some could argue that this is great for longevity, but I’d say it errs on the side of being a little too simple. 

So, what can you do, really? Well, Ropuka will run around the island cutting grass – I know, I sound like a broken record. However, he won’t do this indefinitely. He has a stamina bar and when it’s depleted, he’ll need a resting period. Fortunately, these periods aren’t long and you can upgrade him to ensure that his bar refills faster. But, that’s all Ropuka does. He cuts grass and he rests.

For your part, you’ll be able to use the grass clippings to upgrade him or buy stickers for decoration. Sometimes, you’ll pick up actual coins, but they’re rare. So, you may want to trade in your clippings for coins. However, every time you trade grass for coins, the amount of grass you need to spend for the coin goes up.

Y’all wanna see my sticker collection?

With coins, you’ll be able to buy stickers or a lottery box that will have five random stickers inside. These stickers will affect your island and Ropuka. You can find stickers that give him hats or stickers that change the island such as grass color, fence, resting area, house, and front yard decoration.

Each of these stickers exists on pages and once you fill those pages, you’ll earn a percentage toward completing the collection. Once you earn everything, there’s nothing more to do.

Personally, I think the lottery box is the way to go every single time. You spend 5 coins on it, but you get 5 items. This works out to 1 coin per item whereas in the book, if you try to purchase the missing items, you’re spending 3-5 coins just for one.

Yes, this does mean that you will get multiples, but that’s fine because if you get 5 of them that item is considered maxed out and will no longer show up in the lottery. You don’t get a bonus for an individual item being maxed out, but you do get a bonus for having a maxed page.

These are your main goals. Have Ropuka cut the grass so that you can hoard stickers.

I’d like to say that upgrading him helps with waiting, but I don’t feel as if the upgrade system is scaled very well. This is further hindered by the fact that you don’t really know what something does when you upgrade it. Nothing pops up to tell you and hovering over it doesn’t do anything but highlight the stat. So, let’s go through it.

There are 6 stats you can upgrade split into two categories. Ropuka has four stats: stamina, resting, cutting, and running. Grass notes affect your grass and have the last two stats: quality and growth.

• Stamina affects how long Ropuka will cut before he needs a rest.
• Resting affects how long he needs to rest.
• Cutting affects how much he’ll cut.
• Running affects how fast he runs.
• Quality affects the durability.
• Growth affects the grass growth rate.

Seems straightforward enough, right?

Here’s where things are confusing. I had to look up a guide to figure out what quality means. In a guide in the discussion section on Steam, it says it affects durability AND the value of the grass. This isn’t true. At least, not in a way that matters. You can up the quality all you like and, in my experience, it’s not going to get you more payout.

You want to upgrade your cutting if you want to see your grass go up by more than a factor of 1. It took me a long time to figure that out and I was so confused as to why I was dumping so much into quality and not seeing the the number increase. When I switched to cutting, I started to collect more.

So, go for cutting first and upgrade everything else around that, or else you’ll be sitting there idling out one grass per second which isn’t going to do you any favors. The game progresses slowly enough already.

And that’s it. You spend hours waiting around for a moment of progression. Rinse and repeat. I wish there were more to it, but I really can’t complain much since it does exactly what it claims to. Just know that if you are a completionist, you’re going to be pals with Ropuka for a few weeks straight.

If you’d like to give Ropuka’s Idle Island a try, you can get it on Steam for $3.99. If you want an idle game with a bit more interactivity, you can check out the preview we did on Hydroponics Farm and Store Simulator.