Last updated on December 14th, 2025 at 01:17 pm
Idle Area 51 – Strategy Game Review
Idle Area 51 is a Strategy/Simulation game from PlaySide Studios PTY LTD, first launched in 5th February 2021.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 10,154+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Idle Area 51 Stand Out
The aliens have CRASH landed!
Salvage as much alien tech as possible from the downed UFO and take it to your super secret desert facility for research in Idle Area 51.
Start small and build your operation from scratch. Unlock the secrets of alien biology, UFO construction, high-powered laser weaponry and interstellar travel and gain more funding from the shadowy government department overseeing everything. Maximize the efficiency of your facility by speeding up your processes; buy more vans, get more salvage, increase your research stations, train your workers and grow your operations!
But you’ll need to work fast. Keep an eye out for the little green guys, get your tinfoil hats ready and expect a visit from the Guys in Black! Start a misinformation campaign to throw the public off the scent, watch out for raids on your facilities and upgrade your operations with goodies from interplanetary Star Gates and mysterious Quasars.
You’re in charge of the facility so develop your strategy, reduce costs, increase revenue and know that the choices you make will decide the fate of your operation …and maybe even the world!
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Idle Area 51 is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 15th May 2024
Recent improvements include:
Bug fixes and app improvements :)
Download & Availability
Idle Area 51 is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Im down to the last level and have been for month because Im barely earning any money at all. We stop by daily or so and every couple weeks we might be able to level one thing up once. Thats it. Are there any updates coming or is this all we have? Id give it a better rating but it just boring now.
Its a typical idle game, nothing special. Some of the translations are broken and just say English instead of whatever the English text would be. It also doesnt warn you when a button is going to play an ad, so you end up getting surprised by what is sometimes a pretty long ad (one was over a minute). The quests icon will also have an indicator on it as if something is done, but when you open the list none are done. We ended up uninstalling the game, mostly because of the surprise ads, but also because it seemed to be the same as many, many other idle games Ive played.
We got to the Air Force Base. We were working on upgrading the propulsion lab. We got the point of CT worth of money, then the money thing went NAN then it gave us several things of 11 gems and then it would so present 11 gem opportunities,But they would never count. We figured maybe our game neglected, so we closed it out, now we cant get past the loading screen. Please fix.
Out of nowhere we just went – in money.
Logged in it froze then it disappeared. Not too thrilled.
Title says it all. Ive been playing this for a few days now and Im at the point where Im just not making enough money to proceed without micro transactions. You can only idle farm for two hours, so whats the point of Calling it, an idle game? Typical trash tier 1/10.
Got to the last level very quicklydont abandon this game! Make Moar Levels Plz.
What a very fun game to play we love being able to start over and over and over again as we want thank you very much for doing such a great job keeping his game up and running properly thank you.
This game blew our mind right away and we got no ads and double revenue right away! We really dig the MiB feel so far we will pay for more additions right away ps also buying offline researcher too just didnt yet been on this game to much.
Its not glitchy right now we just got the game but it is super fun it is now one of our favorite idol games.
This game is great no lag problems or random ads every 2 seconds very good to try.
We finished all the levels add more please.
We were just wondering if there was a way you could go to different crash sites and explore them. Also we would love it if you were able to talk to any aliens you fund cause that would be the best either way amazing game. Also could you like get rid of the laser thing because we dont want to be shooting aliens if they did nothing wrong. And yes we know this is a pretend game that is made up of millions of pixels but still GET RID OF THE LASER RESHEARCH.
This is the most fun game ever best game ever.
Been playing for a few days its pretty fun (kills time). But one thing Im running across is after you level up an area pass 700 they run out of supplies no matter how many trucks or how much we level up loading/unloading the area always has 0 salvage the moment they get 1 its being deposited so it makes no money. One thing we wish there where is the option to purchase more forklifts maybe 1 or two extra just to have more trucks loading at once. We bought the ad free option and even with using all the power ups the games pacing is still very slow. P.s the speed up research is pointless it speeds you up but halfs your earnings we timed it and youre making the same money also it adds the the original problem where the areas dont have any salvage to use atm we have 4 areas just standing still not making money.
Great game, but has a ton of adds.
We dont really have anything to say, its just, this idle game is way better than others. This game does something new. All and all, its a great game.
We love this game! Its very busy and very strategic.
It doesnt cost much and is super creative.
It is a good game so far You should get it.
Its rare to find an idle game, or really any game on the App Store, that shows its team takes pride in their craft. There are many positives to Idle Area 51, as well as a couple negatives (or mainly a nagging speculation we have, addressed below), but we can say Ive been very pleased with our overall experience. The graphics are wonderful: the world and character design are fun and add to the immersive experience. The soundtrack is incredible and relaxing (more on this later). The goals are fairly achievable without forcing ads to attain them. Yes, ads help in certain regards but we dont mind watching a few to get an extra bump towards our goal. We truly enjoy the atmosphere of this game; the theming, plot, and mechanics all fit well together. The issues we have are minor but still a bit concerning. First, as mentioned previously, the soundtrack is wonderful. The problem is only one song plays and then theres silence until we close the app. Is this a bug? If its not a bug we would plead for the remaining tracks to loop as necessary. We have heard more than one song, its just only one plays randomly and thats it. Secondly, the daily crate has a misleading label, we are led to believe that well get one free crate every so often. However, when attempting to open it an ad plays. Theres no indicator that an ad watch is required to open the crate. Other boosts are labeled appropriately. So, Im not sure if this is a design flaw or not but it should be addressed. This comes to our final concern: we recently purchased the ad-free experience (therefore the free crate issue pertains to general players) and Ive noticed every time we select a boost or double our income at first log in, theres a moment where a pop-up reads fetching an ad. This leads us to suspect that youre still getting ad revenue from paying customers. If thats the case, this is a huge ethical violation. And anyone in the tech industry knows ethics are what guide business policies and user experience. If Im wrong, we find it strange that this message would still present itself. If Im right, we think others should be aware of this practice.
The biggest issue with this game is the amount of forklifts and the whole loading/unloading. Once you level up to a certain level you have no materials no matter what you do and really cant make any money. Allow people to buy more forklifts to load more than one truck at a time.
It is a really fun game but Im at level 4 and cant get enough money to progress. Aside from that its a really fun idle game with a nice sy-fy ascetic.
So overall its a great game but the only thing thats bad is we had great data like got lazer thing blah blah but when this game got update ALL our data got deleted whatever that is please fix it we want our data back.
We love this game its awesome but its our favorite game out of all our games and when we leave our house we cant play it! :( plz make it offline! But the ads to Rrrr we hate that thats why we like offline games. (Oh ya it takes up some storage maybe a lot? Idk) but if you make this game offline Ill give this game a 5 star! (Oh and its not 4 star its 4 in a half star! And play wobble dogs! Its the cutest thing.
This game makes our phone heat up.
Let us start by saying that this is a decent idle game, better than a lot of others on the store. The balancing is a bit off, but otherwise its fine to us. Our biggest issue is that the free Quasars dont work. Sometimes we watch the add and nothing happens. More often, though, we watch the add and get shown the float visual effects that come with the quasars, but we dont get any rewards and the game stops working. We end up stuck on the store page, unable to tap on anything, and end up having to close the game.
So we play these games a lot, watch the adds find new games and such, but when you are making 1 mill on normal speed but watch an ad to increase speed it cuts it in half to where you dont make your 1 mil per second. Ive got screenshots and will be trying to contact the developers and see if they can fix this issue. Other than that this game is awesome and we play it a lot.
We think this is a really fun idle game from what Ive play, we had beaten the second world after a day or so and decided to pay for no ads. After we got no ads then we would click on the Men in Black pop up to get money for free basically, and we just set our phone down to do the dishes and would just keep clicking the Men In Black every time they would show up. Thats when we noticed that the amount of money they give you is based off how much money you have in the bank, which is a very poor design choice. While we spent 30 minutes washing our dishes and cleaning and clicking the Men in Black every time they popped up. We went from having like 20 million, with MiB pop up giving us 1-5mil, next time they gave us 9~Mil, then they gave us 15 mil, then 30 mil, then 100 mil, then 200 mil, eventually during the time we were washing dishes and not really playing the game the MiB had started giving us 500 Billion, and it just kept going until we had 50bb saved up in an incredibly short time. Its a huge exploit and we could basically beat the whole game without ever buying a single upgrade for anything if we just keep collecting the MiB bonuses as they keep increasing practically double every time since they scale up with how much money you have stored. Its a fun game from what Ive seen but we would call this a bug/exploit that shouldnt be there.
We enjoyed the gamble but are there not going to be anymore updates with new facilities.
First off, this game is very basic. Nothing really changes as you progress through the levels. Everything looks the same, just cost a lot more to level up. One thing that absolutely needs to be added is a MAX buy option. The beginning stages of news levels are very annoying. You just hold the buy button for a super long time. There also needs to be more levels. Im pretty sure Im about to beat the game.. And it hasnt even been that long.
We got to the highest site within a few weeks and it seems like this game is dead in the water, we cant progress any of our missions and its painfully slow to upgrade the stations at this point.
What is the max on upgrading the labs. Ive hit 2000 already. Did they make it 9999 or what.
Interesting concept and fun graphics but zero depth. We can have our phone sit all night pick it up and play for 2 minutes and then have to wait again to play for 2 minutes hours later.
The overall look and feel of the game is great. The only thing that killed this game for us was discovering the cash reward for watching an ad was ~40% of your current cash on hand. This makes it far too easy to stockpile and rip through the entire game without a challenge.
Seriously. Ive been waiting for MONTHS! MONTHS! You just did an update and we thought you FINALLY added more missions. But NOOOOOOO.
Need new operations and construction! Finished in two days.
Fun game but if not for two (deliberate?) flaws, it would be a 5-star game. First, when you change levels, you cannot go back to the previous level. Second, when changing levels, you lose whatever bankroll you accumulated up to that point. We had 357.2PP in funds and headed for the space station. Bankroll dropped to 5k. Deleted the app. Fun only on the first level, "The Base".
Found a bug that made us uninstall the game. Watched a few ads. Even spent 1 dollar on the game to get enough money to go to the moon. Game glitched. Didnt bring us there. Took our 90 trillion dollars and we were stuck at space station. Im very upset with this.
The game was decent to bad developers abandoned it.
We were really enjoying playing this game until we reached the point of very VERY slow progress. Too slow it makes us believe it was made like that so players would pay.
Purchased no adds. Still seeing adds. Dont pay for this app. Its a scam.
On several occasions we have lost a few billion in income and 100 gems due to crash and when we hit recover like back it up nothing happens all lost.
Was a fun game while leveling but now that we have reached the max level and it says updates coming there is nothing to do. Reading the other reviews the developer has obviously moved on to other games and abandoned this one.
Your game is bad its not working fix it.
Im sorry but this game is not for us this is a game that makes our cellphone CRASH and our cellphone almost broke cause of this game so please fix some bugs cause when we tried upgrading it did not work even if we had a trillion.
This game is almost good. Except they made some very poor design choices, making it possibly the worst idle game Ive played, which is a genre we play almost exclusively on our phone. Want progress? Spend money or watch 30+ ads. Otherwise, wait days to feel any sense of accomplishment. Easy uninstall.
Guys, we expect more from you. Throwing ads during FTUE after new install? Cmon now. And no indication of ads when opening a common Quasar.
A very boring game with no creativity or thought put into it.
The app no longer loads at all. Too many bugs to play.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.8.12
- Size: 227.01 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: PlaySide Studios PTY LTD
Last updated: 15th May 2024 | Genre: Strategy, Simulation | Developer: PlaySide Studios PTY LTD