This was the case with Brendan Malcolm, the one-man team at Australian producer Games By Malcs, whose idle RPG Melvor Idle is now being published by Jagex, the creator of Buy RS Gold, a title that was at the heart of Malcolm's motivation behind his own project.

Melvor Idle strips away the 3D graphics and environments of RuneScape and similar MMOs and distills it down to a menu-based idle that lets players control their skills, inventory and quests. Activating combat encounters and winning earns XP and loot which can later be put into the specific level of skill tree or upgrade players choose, while repeating actions like crafting or woodcutting will yield rewards of their own.

Malcolm has been playing RuneScape since he was a kid, and has also dabbled in many of the leading idle games such as Clicker Heroes, Cookie Clicker and NGU Idle. While he enjoyed them however, he believed that the genre could have something more that would be rewarding in the same way to Jagex's flagship RPG.

"So I set out to create my own, without even thinking about how it would end up being released, or even become famous," he tells GamesIndustry.biz. "I was looking to create something outside of the established idle game mould one that was feature-rich and allowed players a real choices about how they wanted to move forward rather than simply increase numbers on a constant treadmill.

After pondering ideas for bit behind closed doors, I started meshing ideas and mechanics from classic MMOs alongside the popular idle game formula, creating something that could be enjoyed in a casual way, while on the move and be incorporated into the hectic lifestyle of players."

He adds: "While the numbers and stats aren't the things that players like about MMOs but it's what the hardcore fanbase tend to gravitate towards once the exploration is finished. Because it's so integral to the things that long-term players' focus is, it made sense to adopt this as one of the main elements of Melvor's game's concept. Additionally, it is compatible with design elements common in many games that are not played."

In his quest to draw inspiration from other MMOs The structure in RuneScape was one he studied with particular attention, developing the universe of Melvor Idle, a world that is a parallel one with the 20 years old RPG. "RuneScape became a key basis for the game as it was such a fundamental sport for me" He explains."

As with many others, I started playing RuneScape because most of my friends at the time was playing the game. Its being a browser-based game was a huge part of the game's easy entry point with RuneScape's extensive branching depths and complexity are what kept me coming back to it for a long time -- which is something I wanted to replicate with Melvor Idle."

With Malcolm being open about his motivations the word quickly spread to Jagex that the fan had developed a game that was based on its own RS 3 Gold. A staff member flagged it to management, with Director of Product Management Chris Pfeiffer telling us his team was impressed by "how many things had been accomplished and how much of the game was in line closely with RuneScape."