Third time's the charm — Idle Xanxia is now close to 1,000 Steam players
Hey everyone,
This is the third time I’m posting Idle Xanxia here, and I wanted to be transparent : Yes, part of the goal is obviously to get more people to check out the Steam version and yes, I use AI-assisted tools for some visual assets/workflows.
But I also wanted to get feedback on the game and talk a bit about the experience of building an incremental/cultivation game.
A few months ago, this started as a browser prototype on itch and last week I released the Steam version
At this point:
- the itch version has reached 20k+ session play
- the Steam version is approaching 1,000 players
- Average playtime on Steam is now close to 40 hours
- the community has become extremely good at breaking systems and arguing about optimization
As someone new to the experience, it's been really challenging to plan the whole thing, to think dependencies between your systems and be intentional with everything you do, because it will be questioned.
The moment a system stops feeling like meaningful progression and starts feeling like repetitive maintenance, players notice immediately.
The biggest example for me so far has been Sect missions:
some players enjoy the optimization layer, while others feel it crossed the line from “idle strategy” into “micromanagement simulator”.
Same thing happened with Dao systems:
I initially leaned very hard into commitment, randomness, and build identity.
Some players loved that.
Others absolutely hated feeling trapped by bad combinations or scaling mistakes.
The game itself is an idle/cultivation RPG focused on:
- stat allocation
- Dao paths
- rebirth systems
- persistent Aspect progression
- long-term scaling/build optimization
I’m still actively iterating on the systems every week, and honestly a lot of the current direction is coming directly from players arguing with each other about what “good incremental design” actually means. and I am happy to talk about the game, the experience, or anything really.