Sidenote: Please disregard the "total time played". I only played it on Steam so I could review it.

It's Shakes and Fidget, a web-based game based on an old web comic, playable in a bootstrapped, stand-alone Flash player. Great? Not sure why you'd ever want to play it through Steam though. The game was designed to be playable on any platform with Flash capabilities -- which is to say almost any operating system and almost any browser -- so why would you want to play it from Steam? Granted, I feel somewhat similarly toward Transformice… but at least that has Steam Achievements tied to it. This here is just the game with no additional bells or whistles. But cheese-talk aside, let's actually talk about the game in this review, shall we?

Basically, the whole concept of Shakes and Fidget started as a deconstruction and parody of World of Warcraft. From things like how inventories work to the weirdness of multiple people turning in what should be unique quest items (bounties, specifically), the comic was a pretty fun look at Blizzard Entertainment's pride-and-joy of an MMO. And then in 2009… the comic based on the MMO turned into an MMO (of sorts) itself, powered by a small, Germanic company called Playa Games. But they obviously couldn't use Blizzard's locations and characters for their parodic game… so what did they do? Well, they "skirted" the copyright law, of course. No, no, there was nothing underhanded about what they did. But here's the thing:

You can't put a copyright on generic concepts.

And so, a coat of paint here, a fresh nametag there, and bam. Shakes and Fidget was completely in the clear, despite the intentional similarities to Blizzard's MMO. And all without compromising what was Oskar Pannier's and Marvin Clifford's original vision.

So, what is the actual game about and how does it play? Well, Shakes and Fidget is what I (and many others) like to call a "Waiting Simulator™"; a game where you click a button, then you wait… then click another button, then you wait… then you click another button, then you wait… and then-- eh, you get the idea. That concept in an of itself isn't exactly groundbreaking. There are plenty of games on the Internet that force you to wait in order to proceed, so that can't be the selling point, right? No, the real reason to play this game, whether you're a fan of the comic or not, is the humor. As stated, the game deconstructs the concepts of World of Warcraft and other general fantasy settings in order to bring you ridiculous quests in far-off places, unusual characters who may-or-may not be your friend, and a fantastic gameplay experience full of intrigue and wonderment… for about five minutes.

See, the biggest problem with this game is the fact that it's very repetitive. While you can choose from one of three classes, eight races of either gender, and there are thousands of different items with thousands of different modifiers out there… the fact of the matter is, there's just nothing there to keep your attention. Once you've read the quest descriptions of all 20-some quests the tavern-goers give you, all you're left with is clicking-and-waiting. Even doing dungeons and getting unique items is a bore after a while.

That's the viewpoint of a casual gamer. What about you hardcore gamers out there? Well, have I got good news for you: Shakes and Fidget has a full-fledged PvP combat system, as well as leaderboards to mark your progress. You can hack-and-slash, poke-and-skewer, or zap-and-flash your way to the top of your server-of-choice through PvP combat or, if you prefer group activities, guild-vs-guild combat! But… it's pretty much more of the same there, as well. Plus, there's no guarantee you'll even do well, considering the heavy favoring of pay-to-win this game has.

Oh, I forgot to mention that, didn't I? Yeah, this game has a pay-to-win system. Basically, the in-game economy runs on Mushrooms. Regular, everyday, run-of-the-mill Mushrooms. While you'll find Mushrooms every once-in-a-while while questing, you'll find out in short order, these random Mushrooms will barely help you. What you need is Mushrooms by the basket… Mushrooms by the bushel… Mushrooms by the cart! And so, you'll inevitably dole out anywhere from $4.99 USD to a whopping $99.99 USD (yes, they accept other currencies) to make sure the Mushrooms never run out.
"But what do they actually do?" I hear you ask. Well, Mushrooms allow you to buy vastly superior equipment faster, do more tavern and dungeons quests, fight other players more frequently, and even become a mandatory currency for guilds and fortresses later into the game. You can even completely negate the waiting time for quests and other things with Mushrooms. All that from a simple, orange fungus… wow.
In addition to Mushrooms, you can actually pay to permanently increase your stats. As far as I'm aware, you'll never use Mushrooms to do this, but rather the tried-and-true currency of Gold and Silver. However, if you're raking in thousands-and-thousands of gold, you can turn yourself into a monstrous PvP god within a matter of hours (on a fresh server) -- especially if you're constantly refueling yourself with Mushrooms.

It baffles me as to how a game like this became so popular. There's no strategy and not even really much luck involved. You just click-and-wait, or pay-your-way, to victory. And despite all of that… I myself have been playing it off-and-on since its introduction in 2009. I don't know what it is! I really don't! There's just something utterly addicting about it, I guess… Especially if you're trying to fill your Scrapbook of Meticulousness -- an item-and-enemy catalogue which, coincidentally, boosts XP gains.

So… yeah. While I can't recommend the Steam version of this game, I'd say definitely give it a look otherwise. It might amuse you for a minute… or it might amuse you for years.

Több óra és két nemzetközi világ után mondhatom, hogy a játék maga tetszik, de éppen a játék "ingyenes" része miatt nem ajánlom a játékot.
Ami tetszik benne: - Sok utalás van, filmekre, játékokra.
- Ellehet lenni vele, ha hátérben futtatod a játékot.
- Sok mosolyt csalt az arcomra a vicces küldetések, epicus tárgyak megnevezése.
Amiért nem ajánlom és van negatív véleményem:
- Fizető eszköz a gomba, a játékban az arany, hogy "ingyenes" nem mondanám, egy szint után mindenért fizetni kell pl.: normál felszerelés arany+ 1 gomba, ritka arany+ 15 gomba...
- Sok hiba van a játék menetében, a magyarításban,
- Egy idő után unalmas a játék és semmi késztetést nem ad, hogy folytassam a játékot vagy hogy minden nap belépjek,
- A fejlesztők sorra indítják a világot, de az inaktív játékosokkal semmit nem csinálnak, gondolom, mert akkor kiderülni, hogy valójában mennyi a tényleges játékos,
- Beléphetsz egy céhbe a jó csapatért és jó társaságba kerülhetsz, ha szerencséd van. Igazság az, hogy a magyar céh vezetők kicsinyesek és játék helyett, inkább egymással versengenek a játékosokért és ezért mindent meg is tesznek pl.: átírogatott levelek, egymás besározása...
- Chat fal primitív és mindig kiléptet a szerver,

S még sorolhatnám a hibákat... Lényeg ha pénzed van, király lehetsz a játékban. Szereted a „magyar mentalitást” a magyar céhek tártkarokkal várnak téged, de ha szórakozni szeretnél egy jót, válasz inkább más játékot. A piacon vannak jobb és szebb játékok is.

What the actual ♥♥♥♥

Очень клевая игра играл давным давно еще до вайпа всем начинающим РПГ-шникам советую,игра вовсе не требует доната решает только ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ство!)

First of all I will say that Shakes and Fidget does not exist as a real game (not even as time waiting browser game) and is an utter failure of a project designed to take away your money before you notice it and quit and it shouldn't be on Steam, and I will explain why.

I am an officer in a guild that is 10th on the list atm , and have a characer level 247 and in top 500 players which is 0.01% of players in W6.

I can only say this. I was in a guild that is 5th in rank and it fell apart completely even though it was one of the best organised on the server , whith all players loging in each day and playing great.

Unfortunately , that was not the only guild that lived though that fate. Five more top guilds recently crashed just becasue of the one fact , all players stopped playing the game and were ♥♥♥♥ing utterly fed up with it. The only guild that survived is Seeleute which is top 1 guild that maintained itself by taking away players from other top guilds and it's currently changing members all the time due to the fact that people stop playing.

The main problem in the game is that end game doesn't exist at all , there is nothing to do. The more you level up harder it becomes to progress , and that gets exponentially so. Basically there was a bonus weekend where you get 5x more gold for quests and guard duty , 3 times increased drop chance for mushrooms on quests , 5 times increase chane of epic stuff in the shop ,and double up xp gain from quests and that is all combined in one day. All I can say is that I played 300 thirst burning 20 mushrooms Saturday and Sunday , and what I got from it was a small progression. Now what do you think guys that are 300th or 320th level get from that ?? Almost nothing... My guild leader stoped playing on that exact day and he was 16th on the rank list.

Shakes and Fidget has it's way to lure you to buy and burn a lot of mushrooms but in the end it gives you actually nothing. You can read the details how but it's not that much important.

(((((An item you might want to buy , you need to spend 1 mushroom or 10 or 15 for an epic , if you ran out of potions , rotate 10 times the potion shop and you will probably getpotions you need including ethernal life potion or you might not. You leveled up a couple of times and you need new weapons and items , well rotate the weapon shop more and more sometimes 15 or 20 times to get what you want and guess what , every rotation costs 1 mushroom and you might not get the item you really need at all, and 50 mushrooms are 5 EU. You are stuck and can't defeat dungeon bosses which gives you by far the most experience , well then you have ethernal life elixir and it costs 15 mushrooms. When it comes to that you can raid a dungeon every 1 hour , or skip the timer and spend a mushroom , so 10 mushrooms will cover your whole raid day and power-leveling , where you can level 10 times or more if you are smart in one or two days combined with shop rotation and good ammount of gem reserve , but only untill you become a higher level player , so you should definitely pay up , or have a a lot of patience which leads to nothing actually. To play the weekends where you have bonuses like more gold , exp , epics , and mushrooms as I mentioned you also need to burn 10 mushrooms for extended play and you need to do that. You can do the same on regular days too , but it's quite boring and most guys who spend 10 mushrooms a day waiting for hours for the 300 thirst to burn , they burn out themsevles and again stop playing the game after they get fed up being high on the rank list.))))))

All I can say it's just not worth it in any way. In other games you can sell you character for money because people can do something with it , play and enjoy the game. If you have here 320th+ level character , you might as well go fishing or do something else , for high level players the game is totally dead.

I've been playing this game for a long time now (outside steam).
I really want to give this game a positive review, because it's pretty funny and they update it very often introducing new and exciting stuff but...

...it's a browser game, so I can't. Since it's a browser game it's clearly pay to win (gameforge type of game, where you're allowed to buy diamonds (shrooms in this case) which will let you do three times more missions, buy better mounts, letting you do the missions faster, reset your dungeon timers, boost your guild stats and so on, and so on). I hate pay to win. My friends hates pay to win. My mother hates pay to win. My dog hates pay to win. You should hate pay to win aswell.

Don't do browser games, kids.

Finally, the "Loading Screen Simulation" genre has come to Steam! This game actually simulates the real wait time experience of waiting on long loading screens, but without the hassle and annoyance of having to play some game inbetween! For all of you who have upgraded to the topnotch computer technology of today, and simply miss the bygone days of waiting on a loading screen so long you can get up, take a bathroom break, fix a supper, and take the garbage out all long before the loading screen has finished, than this is the game for you! When you first start out your loading screen simulations only take a minute or two, but don't worry, with true dedication you can work your way up to six minute, nine minute, twelve minute waits . . . and beyond!

Now the developers know that too much of a good thing must be curbed, so you are limited to only waiting 100 minutes each real-time day. But never fear, you can hand them wads of real world money so that you can continue to enjoy hours and hours of waiting well beyond that first 100 minutes. Add to that the possibility of a pay-to-win scheme for some character that you level up by waiting, and then pay money to enhance so that you can be the Load Screen Arena champion. Get your name on the leaderboards and prove to the world that you can wait on load screens like a true champion and pay real world money to squash all those fools under you who are too niave to pay their hard earned money to be better than you!


Ok, in all seriousness, there just isn't enough to do in this title to really make it a game. You set out on "quests" which you get to pick one of three from the inn. Wait for the designated time on a screen still until there is a small "battle" (back-and-forth lowering of hitpoints between you and a monster that you do not get to affect in any way as it is determined by your character's current stats) and you receive the reward you picked when you picked the quest up. you get to make minimal decisions of what stats to increase and equipment to upgrade, which for the most part, is just pick the next piece of equipment offered that has better stats than your current equipment. There is almost no strategy in making decisions, and if you really want to "prove" to others that you are better, than you can pay money to enhance your stats faster so that you win in the arena matches which are also static back-and-forth, hitpoint lowering, attacks that you can not influence other than paying money to increase your characters static stats befor the battle.

I put my time into this game as most reviews said the negative reviewers hadn't played far enough into the game to really enjoy it. It's not a terrible game, and it is free to try out, but as you can only play one Steam game on your account at a time, you do not have the option of just minimizing this game and playing something more entertaining while you wait to make your two choices befor having to wait again. There are other games to put hours into that you will be more engaged with and that have more choices and strategy, so I would not recommend wasting those hours on this title. The higher you get in this game, the more options you unlock (dungeons, fortress building, pets) but it is more of the same substanceless fluff as the earlier game stuff, so it is hardly worth the hundreds of hours required to put in just to get there. This title might work on Facebook, or some such forum where you are fiddling with a few options befor reading through posts and blogs and the like, but not really great for locking up your Steam account where you can't enjoy any other games while you wait on this one.

Cons:
Feels like a facebook game. You pick quests and wait for a timer to go down basically.
Microtransactions to speed things up.

Pros:
Nice artwork
Fun writing
Quirky humor

Not sure why this is on Steam? Seems like a really perfect Facebook game. I don't feel like I can give it a positive review because of this.

Despite the amazing Artwork, there is no gameplay here. Unlike other, more recent clickers, there isn't really much to do. The game is extremely grindy and with Grindy I mean having an option to select between one of three quests, although alternating, which comes with a quest reward, a time frame which the quest will take up and how much of your Thirst for Adventure it costs you.

Each day you get 100 minutes worth of Quest for Adventure, after which you can use real currency to replenish the Quest for Adventure or wait till the day ticks over. The game lets you 'work' for the city guard, which basically is just a way to send your character for an hour or two to work, earning money.

More interesting features like Pets are hidden behind a level barrier, requiring you to go as far as level 75 to unlock pets. And you do so by going on the aforementioned quests. At the beginning those take mere minutes and even though there is a fight at the end of it, you have no control over the fight. Just watch your portrait send some cheap effect at their portrait as their (and your) HP bar goes down.

The game is awfully passive, even for a clicker and I think there are better clickers on Steam that actually engage you, even though you only click on things. This game however, is so passive... its boring. Click on quest, wait 3 minutes, click on new quest. Rinse and repeat.. maybe after a few weeks you'll be high enough in your level to unlock Dungeons, pets and other features.

Also when you are told your level 8 character is stronger than over 60% of the populace, then one has to question what the point is of playing. It seems awfully pointless to me.

It's a waiting game. You have to actively click 2 buttons then wait from 10-90 seconds, then click again to collect a meagre reward (after watching an animation or clicking again to skip it). You gain nothing if you actually idle unless you take a "job" in 1-hour increments (that disables other actions for that period).

• The art style is decent, but it's basically a picture book because of how slow paced this is.
  
  
• The much-touted parody/humour element seems to be just some bad puns and outdated gaming / "geeky" references.
  
  
• There are still settings not translated to English, odd for a game that boasts such a long history.
  
  
• I had some sync issues where buttons would become unresponsive, or my actions would trigger the animation but the game behaved as if I didn't perform those actions.

Considering the majority of positive reviews are saying "I loved this game 4, 5, 6 years ago", maybe it's best to remember this as a popular browser game of the past.

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FWIW, I'm a huge fan of idle games (1700+hrs in Time Clickers), RPGs, and parodies, but Shakes & Fidget is not a good example of any of those. If you're looking for a good parody RPG waiting game, try Progress Quest, the grandfather of idle games (progressquest.com, not on Steam).