Nonstop Knight is a great idle experience. With graphics that reminds someone of an action RPG and with a few gameplay systems to engage the player, I was completely hooked and played it for much more than I usually play these games. In a sea of idle games, I would totally recommend Nonstop Knight for many reasons including the progression, level of customization and potential for unlocking new stuff that are all so important in a game like that.
The core of the game looks like Clicker Heroes and many others of that genre, you need to kill a certain number of enemies on each floor of a dungeon, and after a certain number of floors, there's a boss that might kill you if you're not strong enough. Now, it's presented in an isometric view and your character runs around killing things - or teleports around if you use Frenzy potions - while collecting gold, finding treasure chests with new loot and completing daily quests. The player doesn't do much in Nonstop Knight except use skills - you have a bar of three abilities - and pick between items you find to use the ones that fit better your playstyle, while upgrading these items to get a stronger knight.
Items can be weapons, helmets and capes, to boost your damage, health and skill damage respectively. They can have between one and three effects, with legendary items having a unique ability, like auto-revive during boss fights or getting gold for every four hits you do on enemies. Besides that, stats range from base bonuses to damage, attack speed and health to bonuses when you get hit, kill enemies or use skills. Skills remind me of Diablo 3, with each skill having five runes you progressively unlock, letting you customize your three chosen abilities. I wish skills had a better description of how much damage they dealt. It's not clear how the skill damage you get from capes translates to the damage of each skill.
This game has plenty of challenges you can complete to get the premium currency and this currency is used to buy Frenzy - allows you to warp around and kill monsters really quickly - and Revive potions, also to re-roll the effects on items. It's not too bad, I rarely cursed the game for not having enough premium currency. After you clear twenty floors, you can ascend, restarting to the first floor with level one items - but still keeping your knight level and skills - and a few rewards. The deeper you go before ascending, the more tokens, loot boxes and frenzy potions you get for your next run. These tokens are then used to buy upgrades that permanently buff your knight to let you go further in the dungeon, to get more tokens... You get the idea.
When you complete bounties, you get Pet Boxes, which give you a pet after a while. All pets have various abilities, some of them boost you, some even trigger the effect of specific runes for your skills, regardless of what runes you've chosen. They are a neat thing in the game, but it takes way too long to level them enough, even playing a lot, I didn't get any pet to the second level. But it's not too bad since the game would still work without them and they're a nice addition. There are some events in the game as well, like boss hunts where you compete with other players in real time to kill bosses, get rewards and boost everybody playing with milestone cards. There are also timed events like some Deadmau5 thing, and christmas. It's a bit silly, but it adds new items and abilities to the game, and that's interesting.
I had a great time with Nonstop Knight, I must have ascended ten times before deciding that I needed to move on. It's a great idle game presenting itself as an ARPG with some player controler and a cool style. It's got depth and interesting mechanics, and it'll probably take you a long while to get to the depths of the dungeon. A must-try for fans of idlers!
