Idle Realms: The Eternal Spire

A very familiar formula, executed competently

Idle Realms: The Eternal Spire is a single-player idle RPG built on the Melvor Idle template: eighteen skills split across four categories (six gathering skills, six production skills, three combat skills, three support skills) that all feed into each other, six realms to progress through from a peaceful starting Homestead up to the title's endgame Spire, and a promise of true 24-hour offline progression at full efficiency. Released 13 March 2026 by the small studio that shares the game's name, it costs NZ$4.49 and delivers exactly what that price and premise suggest: a clean, functional skill-idler with real structural depth, but very little that hasn't been done before, and done more completely, by the game it's so obviously modelled on.

That comparison isn't this review's own editorializing — it comes directly and repeatedly from the game's own review base. Independent reviewers writing in German, Russian, and Korean, none apparently quoting each other, all separately describe the game as a simplified or "cut-down" version of Melvor Idle, with one Russian reviewer calling it "a much-simplified and much-reduced Melvor Idle" and a Korean reviewer noting the interface is "almost identical" while judging this version's to be a bit cleaner. Having looked at the screenshots directly, that comparison holds up completely: the left-hand sidebar skill list, the grid-of-activity-cards main panel, and the Mastery Rank sub-progression system underneath each skill are all structurally identical to Melvor's own layout, right down to the categorised skill groupings (Gathering/Production/Combat/Support here versus Melvor's own near-identical split).

Where the interconnected-skills idea actually works

The genuine strength of this kind of design is on full display in the screenshots: the Woodcutting activity screen shows a straightforward level-gated tree list (Normal through Ancient Tree, each with its own XP rate and time cost), but that wood feeds Smithing, which feeds weapon crafting, which feeds combat, which feeds loot drops that go back into Crafting and Enchanting — a genuinely interconnected eighteen-skill economy rather than eighteen disconnected number-go-up bars. A Mastery Rank system (post-level-99 bonuses) and a full Rebirth/prestige system (reset everything for a permanent XP bonus) give the loop a defined long-tail structure. Reviewers who logged extremely long playtimes back this up as a real strength: multiple accounts logged between 4,000 and nearly 42,000 minutes (roughly 65 to 700 hours), including several of the negative reviews, which is a strong signal that whatever its problems, the core loop holds attention for a very long time even among its critics.

The dungeon system offers a distinct mode from the open skill-grinding: a five-room auto-run gauntlet with automatic food-eating management and a visible kill/loot tally, giving structured short-session content alongside the open-ended long-session grinding.

Real, independently corroborated rough edges

Several specific complaints show up across multiple, separately written reviews rather than as one-off gripes, which is the kind of repeated-independent-signal pattern worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as noise. More than one reviewer flagged that potions crafted via Alchemy can't actually be drunk — healing only works through cooked food — making an entire production skill largely decorative; one Chinese-language reviewer put it bluntly as one of several "idiotic design" choices, questioning whether the designer had played their own game. A separate, detailed Russian review lists a cluster of related late-game complaints: the in-game shop and its separate "grace" currency shop become pointless once basic gear is out of reach for what they sell, item tiers become confusing after legendary/mythic gear starts appearing to downgrade in labelling, and pets (a passive-bonus collectible) drop in bulk but only the first copy of each type provides any benefit. One English-language reviewer with a substantial 11,370-minute (~190 hour) playtime reported hitting a wall where maxing every skill provides no benefit beyond a flat 5% speed increase, repeated nine more times purely for achievement completion, calling the game "unfinished" as a result.

A specific and more concrete bug complaint, rather than a design gripe, comes from a reviewer who reported the inventory intermittently failing to register newly gathered items — citing iron ore specifically not being stored and gold totals not updating to reflect what should be available. That account can't be independently verified here, but it's detailed enough, and specific enough about which resource was affected, to be worth flagging directly rather than dismissing. One reviewer also noted combat progress specifically does not continue while offline, unlike every other skill category, calling it "a real arse" given the genre's core promise — a notable exception to the store page's blanket "true offline progression" claim that's worth being aware of before buying on that pitch alone.

Where this lands

Idle Realms: The Eternal Spire is a competent, inexpensive entry into the Melvor-style skill-idler genre rather than a genuinely original one, and its own review base says so more plainly and more consistently than most games' critics manage. The interconnected eighteen-skill economy and the dungeon mode both work as designed based on the screenshots and the extended playtimes logged by reviewers on both sides of the recommendation, but a cluster of independently repeated complaints — decorative alchemy, a pointless late-game shop, confusing item tiers, and an offline-progression exception for combat specifically — all point at a game whose systems were built broadly rather than polished individually. At NZ$4.49, this is reasonable value for genre fans who've already exhausted Melvor Idle and want more of the same structure somewhere else, but it's not a game to go in expecting it to stand entirely on its own feet.