Idle games began in the heyday of browser-based gaming, taking up screens while players worked through the day or watched shows in the evening. They have since gone global, cross-platform, and exploded in every direction, but at their core, the truest idle games still focus on that one important fact: the numbers have to keep going up. Welcome to NGU Idle, a silly game that launched on Kongregate.com and has now come in all of its weird, immature glory to Kartridge. We got a chance to speak to the game’s developer, somethingggg (4G) about this indescribable but totally wonderful gem of an idle. Hello 4G. Tell us about the development team for NGU Idle! It’s just me, 4G, wearing pants only half of the time as I code and design NGU. There are several members in my Discord community who have helped with bits of code or art here and there (Hi TBlazeWarriorT, Jiur, and Musluk!). How long have you been developing games? NGU’s my first-ever game, which I started in the summer of 2017! Unless

One of the games with the highest number of plays on Kongregate.com is Mutilate-a-Doll 2: a sandbox game where -- you guessed it -- players can take control of a ragdoll and expose it to everything their imagination can come up with. Boasting 36 million plays, 1,700+ items, and a ton of user-generated content, MaD2’s premium edition has finally come to Kartridge. We got to chat with 0rava (Dash-rava) about his experience with MaD2 and its journey from online project to downloadable sandbox sensation. Are you an independent developer? How long have you been developing games? I’m a solo developer who’s been making games for a decade or so now, since 2008...ish. I’m primarily self-taught when it comes to programming, so the exact “How long have you been developing games?” timeframe is a bit fuzzy for me. A lot of my early stuff was simply me learning how to make games in the first place, so there were lots of tutorial clones and experimental prototypes (not so much actual games) in the beginning.

Ultrabit, a San Diego-based developer sitting at a dozen team members, was acquired last year by Kongregate. With four published titles and millions of downloads and plays across both PC and mobile, Ultrabit is extending their genre reach with their latest title Crossword Safari: Word Hunt. In this interview, Ultrabit discusses their roots, trying new things, what makes a good word game, and how to keep a small team happy. KONGREGATE: Today we are chatting with Ultrabit, creators of Crossword Safari: Word Hunt, Pocket Politics, and Office Space: Idle Profits. Ultrabit was founded in 2014 by veterans from Zynga, Kongregate, Sony Online Entertainment, and Red 5 Studios. How did Ultrabit first come to be? How did the team meet and start working together? ULTRABIT: The majority of the early Ultrabit folks had worked together previously at companies in San Diego, most notably Kongregate and Zynga. Our co-founders were passionate about taking their game expertise into the indie space and so began gathering a team of industry veterans. Over the course of 12-16 months, the team grew to about 10 people