It's easy to knock old-school RPGs, especially grindfests like RuneScape, for being games where you endlessly and sometimes mindlessly make numbers go up. But Melvor Idle, which self-bills as a RuneScape-inspired idle adventure game that claims to squeeze the genre into its "purest form," leans into that—and Jagex has partnered with developer Games by Malcs to make the RuneScape connection official.
The announcement blog from Jagex reads, "Melvor Idle takes a lot of inspiration from RuneScape and you can just feel it," adding that Jagex's support (and branding) is intended to help make the game "even bigger … while Melvor Idle 2 doesn’t take place in Gielinor, we think a fan-built idle game inspired by our MMOs is more than worthy of the title."
This isn't the first time Jagex has collaborated with Games by Malcs. It became the first Melvor Idle's publisher five years ago, albeit without a branding tweak. While RuneScape has had its fair share of monetization controversies over the years (you can see just how skeptical people were of the partnership when it was first announced on Reddit), it doesn't seem like Melvor has been compromised by trouble along those lines—the announcement blog proudly proclaims the sequel will have "no microtransactions."
Beyond that, it seems like a bigger version of the familiar idle RPG with overhauled visuals and a higher level cap of 120. You might find it a bit odd that it's a "RuneScape Adventure" that doesn't take place in the MMO's setting, but I'm not sure how many people are really invested in Jagex's games for the scintillating lore and worldbuilding. If you end up feeling like a stranger in a strange land, you can always hire someone to spam "buying gf" in a chat window while you get your idle on.
