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Idle Startup
Build a tech company from a one-person garage into a global empire. Train six skills, automate the grind, prestige for permanent Founder bonuses, climb the leaderboards, and chase 50+ achievements in this clean, endlessly-scaling idle game — progress rolls on even while you're away.
What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Score via Steam as of 2026-09-04 · quoted reviews as of 2026-08-06.
What reviewers agree on
44 of the 98 reviews raise this.
“Just open the game, leave it on, buy some upgrades and you'll be earning thousands dollars per second in game. From startup to multimillion corporation in 2 hours.”
“I 100%'d this game so you didn't have to, and I'd rate the experience a generous 15 dead punnies out of 20 expired whoppers. I'd also like to formally request a refund for the countless hours I spent afking... doing…”
“fun time wasting AI game. the america 250 theme enlarged the game screen so i no longer have access to the right side of the game”
12 of the 98 reviews raise this.
“Just open the game, leave it on, buy some upgrades and you'll be earning thousands dollars per second in game. From startup to multimillion corporation in 2 hours.”
“After a little while the "idle" very much takes over as the game gets VERY automated and only needs to be checked on every few hours or so to unlock the next upgrade. That said, the recent addition of cards does help…”
“great idle game - active dev - cant ask for more, love the addition of the new card collection system. keep em coming!”
7 of the 98 reviews raise this.
“I 100%'d this game so you didn't have to, and I'd rate the experience a generous 15 dead punnies out of 20 expired whoppers. I'd also like to formally request a refund for the countless hours I spent afking... doing…”
“i open it once a day because max offline progress is 24hrs nothing much to do after you buy the Auto Upgrades and collect all cards, then there is just Founder Level going up ok to kill little time nothing much”
“it's a game that ends at some point if you're an achievement hunter. quick and easy. would never play again”
4 of the 98 reviews raise this.
“This game is called Idle Startup because once you start it up all you do is idle. I enjoy a good idler but there is absolutely no mid or late game. Once you pass the early game you get the luxury of keeping this open in…”
“this game is okay. its free so i would recommend trying this game. there is nothing wrong with it but it is kind of boring, if your into that type of stuff then you will like it. in my opinion games like this are a huge…”
“Core gameplay is uninteresting, Not really worth the half hour I spend investigating it. Fortunately it's free, but it DOES have microtransactions.”
3 of the 98 reviews raise this.
“great idle game - active dev - cant ask for more, love the addition of the new card collection system. keep em coming!”
“its okay, really didn't have a problem with it. just nothing sticks out about it. its your usual idle game, click some buttons walk away let numbers go up. there isn't anything above that. fun for a bit but that's it. i…”
“After putting 100+ hours into Idle Startup and unlocking all achievements, I can definitely say I enjoyed my time with it. The progression feels satisfying, and the achievements provide fun milestones to work towards…”
45 of the 98 reviews raise this · 8 of them still recommend the game.
“While using AI is not a crime, this game is entirely made with it. Even the patch notes are a fresh copy of what our dear friend claude says. Dont waste your time, the idea could be nice but the execution is very poor,…”
“👎 Not Recommended | ⭐ 2/10 I honestly don't mind indie games with small budgets. I do mind games that feel like they were stitched together by AI and shipped before they were ready. This game has almost no depth, very…”
“feels fresh out of Claude code menus a bit glitchy and has that ai look nothing to do and expensive micro transactions”
27 of the 98 reviews raise this · 8 of them still recommend the game.
“While using AI is not a crime, this game is entirely made with it. Even the patch notes are a fresh copy of what our dear friend claude says. Dont waste your time, the idea could be nice but the execution is very poor,…”
“👎 Not Recommended | ⭐ 2/10 I honestly don't mind indie games with small budgets. I do mind games that feel like they were stitched together by AI and shipped before they were ready. This game has almost no depth, very…”
“This game is called Idle Startup because once you start it up all you do is idle. I enjoy a good idler but there is absolutely no mid or late game. Once you pass the early game you get the luxury of keeping this open in…”
23 of the 98 reviews raise this · 6 of them still recommend the game.
“👎 Not Recommended | ⭐ 2/10 I honestly don't mind indie games with small budgets. I do mind games that feel like they were stitched together by AI and shipped before they were ready. This game has almost no depth, very…”
“This game is called Idle Startup because once you start it up all you do is idle. I enjoy a good idler but there is absolutely no mid or late game. Once you pass the early game you get the luxury of keeping this open in…”
“Not of fan of how much of this has likely been made with AI, progression feels very linear and has no growth at this time. Could have some potential, just please get some real imagery and do some actual programming…”
18 of the 98 reviews raise this · 6 of them still recommend the game.
“Very boring, pretty much nothing happens - not even fun to have as a game on the side when watching series or youtube.”
“Not very well thought through mechanics. Very few choices. It's mostly wait and see numbers go up. Edit: Now I've done everything in the game. It was almost nothing. End score: 2/10”
“will i grind out the 100% achievements? probably. is it actually a fun game? no. once you get the automation unlocked (doesn't take that long) the game literally plays itself completely, the only input you need is to…”
13 of the 98 reviews raise this · 1 of them still recommend the game.
“clearly made with ai, which is not disclosed on the store page despite using ai generated background images as well. sad cash grab”
“👎 Not Recommended | ⭐ 2/10 I honestly don't mind indie games with small budgets. I do mind games that feel like they were stitched together by AI and shipped before they were ready. This game has almost no depth, very…”
“feels fresh out of Claude code menus a bit glitchy and has that ai look nothing to do and expensive micro transactions”
Counted across 98 English reviews, sampled to match this game's 58.6% positive rating · as of 2026-08-06
“game is okay, if you like to watch number go up. I like to watch number go up.”
— a player, Steam review · 26 hrs played“It's a cute little game, but very short and with very few features. I wouldn't call it trash—after all, it doesn't cost anything—but I would have liked a bit more. A plus for me is that there are achievements, at least. And the music is very cozy. And i like the smart overlay.”
— a player, Steam review · 42 hrs played“sadly such an obvious AI game, i had it wishlisted and thought it would be really cool. almost no features, definitely unfinished the AUDACITY to have ingame-purchases for such a game has to be studied”
— a player, Steam review · 3 hrs playedAchievement stats
Global completion rates across all Steam players — a data view of how far people actually get. Source: Steam official stats · as of 2026-09-26.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
Update 8i: The card collection bar really does fill now
A fix for a fix. The card collection bar now actually fills A while back someone reported that the Collection completion bar left a tiny empty sliver at the far right once you had all 150 cards. I fix
Update 8h: No more useless duplicate crafts
A small one from your feedback. Crafting duplicates is blocked Someone asked on the forums what the point of crafting a duplicate card was, and the honest answer was: there wasn't one. You can only eq
Update 8g: A couple of fixes
Two small things from your reports. July 4th theme and the right side of the screen On smaller or high-DPI windows, the Star-Spangled (America 250) theme added an extra label to the top bar that could
Update 8f: A few fixes
Some small things you reported. Refound confirm dialog Two fixes here. First, pressing "Refound" on the confirm dialog now actually closes it and resets your run, instead of leaving the dialog sitting
Update 8e: Two small fixes
A couple of things you reported. No more "0 seconds" on the speedrun boards The fastest-first-99 and fastest-all-99 boards sort by shortest time. A very fast run that finished in under a second was ge
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Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-08-05.
| Genres | Casual, Indie, Simulation, Free To Play |
| Player tags | Casual · Simulation · Economy · Management · 2D Platformer · 2D · Relaxing · Free to Play · Indie · Singleplayer · Idler · Artificial Intelligence (Steam store community voting) |
| Features | Single-player · Steam Achievements · In-App Purchases · Steam Cloud · Family Sharing |
| Languages | English |
| Achievements | 65 |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 (64-bit) Processor: Dual-core 1.6 GHz Memory: 2 GB RAM Graphics: Any GPU with OpenGL 3.3 (Intel HD 4000 era and up) Storage: 250 MB available space Additional Notes: 1280×720 minimum window size