Why I'm building IdleRevs

Playing at your own pace

I don't want missing a day of IdleRevs to feel like a mistake. You should be able to take a break and still enjoy coming back.

I've seen idle games give you 8 hours of offline time and charge for more. I remember being excited to start a new one and waking up during the night to reset the offline timer. After a week, I checked my Oura ring health app and noticed my sleep was off.

That's why IdleRevs gives everyone 10 hours of offline time for free. You should be able to relax after dinner, spend quality time with the people in your life, and get a full night's sleep without checking the game.

I will never reduce that free 10-hour window. Screenshot this. If I do, you can bring the screenshot, come with pitchforks, and cancel me. You have it in writing. - signed dev

I dislike games that become a chore. I want you to have more to say at the end of the week than "I grinded for this car." I'd like it to be something like this:

"I finished 3rd this week. I was neck and neck with the player in 4th, and we kept overtaking each other."

That's the kind of story I want players to have about IdleRevs.

Spending more time learning the tracks and tuning your cars should pay off. I also want the game to be enjoyable for someone who has less time to play. I'm working out how to get both right because I'm still a big-time amateur at game design.

No pay-to-win

I grew up in a poor family. Sometimes we weren't sure if we'd have food for the next day. In my first years of school, some classmates would bring expensive toys that I wanted but could never afford. I couldn't play with them. I don't want anyone else to feel that crappy.

I still remember that. It's part of why I don't want money to decide who gets to compete in IdleRevs.

I don't want IdleRevs to become pay-to-win. I don't want it to become a game that just milks its players for money.

Running the game costs money. I'm open to premium features that help fund development, as long as they don't give paying players an unfair advantage in competition or on any global leaderboard.

Building with the community

I've come to think of developing a game as being a little like running a city.

I may be the mayor, but what good is a city without its citizens?

Players are the reason the game exists. I want players to tell me what works, what frustrates them, and what they'd like me to change.

That's why the roadmap page has a dedicated Polls tab where the community can vote on ideas for the game.

Your votes help me understand what you want from the game and decide what to work on next. Some ideas may need changes before they fit, or take longer to build. When that happens, I want to explain why and discuss it with you.

If I've missed something, tell me. Player feedback has already changed how I build IdleRevs.

The car class brackets came from player feedback. Originally, all classes competed together in the weekly tuning events. Players pointed out that even a carefully tuned lower-class car had little chance against the strongest cars. They had a point, so I added separate brackets and rewards for each class, then did the same for regular track leaderboards.

Players who worked for the best cars still have their competition. Someone who enjoys a lower-class car now has a chance in their own class too. That's a change I'm glad players pushed me to make.

Getting the details right

I've worked in environments where performance mattered and the business requirements could be difficult to meet. I enjoy building something efficient, then figuring out how to make it run better. That carries over into IdleRevs.

I know an idle game with around 50,000 players and a server bill of over $4,000 per month. That number is hard for me to imagine accepting for my own game. Right now, IdleRevs runs on a server with 2 cores and 4 GB of RAM that costs $4.54 per month.

I chose Rust for the backend because I wanted to make efficient use of the hardware. Performance was something I thought about from the start.

The server bill is only part of it. If you click something and the game hangs, that's a problem. I want the game to respond quickly, and I care about fixing the things that get in the way of that.

I want it to be easy to play too. If a mechanic takes too much explaining, I need to look at whether I've made it too complicated. When I add a feature, I want to know what it improves for the person playing.

I'd rather spend time fixing a mechanic I'm unhappy with than rush to add another feature. If something I've built isn't working out, I'm willing to remove it.

How I build IdleRevs

I'm not hiding behind the bush. IdleRevs wouldn't exist without AI. With a baby to take care of, I wouldn't have had the time to build this game on my own.

I've worked on it while holding my sleeping baby, while ironing clothes, and while cooking. Yes, I had a laptop on the kitchen counter.

Taking care of a baby has made me appreciate how tough single mothers have it. If you see a single mother, give her a hug and offer to help. Maybe don't start with the hug if she's a stranger. That might get weird.

The first commit was on 6th January 2026. I've been building this around the time I have available.

I use AI extensively for implementation. I bring my software experience and make the decisions about architecture, gameplay, and balancing. It's a tool that lets me do more with the time I have, and I'm open about using it.

The game art is AI-generated too. That's the part I'm less comfortable with. I want to be able to pay artists for their work. As soon as the game can support that, I want to replace the generated art.