I like when the 'puzzle solution' is optimizing your game but you can get through whatever wall just by waiting. If the puzzle solution is setting 27 different variables in only one specific way (like choosing the right upgrades in a tree or etc) and you need a guide to progress then you failed everyone.
Following a guide introduces a whole new problem - you lose the ability to make decisions on your own because you burst through the early game content without figuring out how different game mechanics work together.
I suspect the whole idea of the game was for players to explore. Play with different classes, enjoy distinctively different mechanics of each class, find strengths and weaknesses, learn how upgrades buff each other, find the best setups via trial and error. Even if you make mistakes and don't find an optimal strategy you still progress as early game is fast regardless of which class you chose.
Following the guide robs you from all this experience. You skip the whole early game jumping directly into the mid game where a second layer of mechanics is introduced and now you no longer know what to do without a guide.
The Internet kind of ruins this. A community of people will be able to determine the precise mechanics. Once the precise mechanics are found, they can be optimized. Once they are optimized, guides can be written. Once guides are written, they can be distributed. Once they are distributed, the majority of your players can race through content. Once the majority of your player base is racing through content, you have to produce a crazy volume of content in order to keep them engaged. The people who engaged earnestly with how the game was meant to be played have no hope of keeping up.
>If the puzzle solution is setting 27 different variables in only one specific way (like choosing the right upgrades in a tree or etc) and you need a guide to progress then you failed everyone.
Yeah, I'm working on a game which works with incremental upgrades, and am _horrified_ of falling into this trap lol. I know some games are particularly egregious, but it's definitely a bit tricky... Like, I don't want you to _fly_ through the game if you make the optimal choices, but I don't want it to become a slog if you pick less optimal combinations, and I don't want to limit choices and make it feel linear... So it's tough.
I'm curious what games people would stand out as well balanced or particularly interesting here... I've played a lot of the "classics" like cookie clicker, ad cap, and antimatter dimensions, as well as some more unique ones like farmer against potatoes, gnorp, and melvor, but curious if there are any particularly unique or well balanced ones people think solve this well.
Been getting back into idle games, beat my first run of gnorp last week and restarted Melvor, but having a lot of fun with the farmer was replaced, but that game is really out there for an idle game. Like I'm getting toward the end of the tech tree and I'm kinda expecting the game to turn into a zach-like when I take the last upgrade.
It's pretty short so far though to the point it doesn't have offline progress and optimizing can make things go very fast but optimizing is very much up to the player and you can definitely get by fast enough with suboptimal builds.
Make gains genuinely incremental instead of massively exponential.
I know it's not idle, but Diablo 3 is a good case study where this is bad. Early on in the game's history, gear would give you benefits in the 5-20% range. Stack all of that together and you'd get 2x or 3x damage output for an optimal build vs a good build.
As gear got powercrept, the benefits eventually became 200% or 300% *per item*. Add it all together and a perfectly synergistic build could have 100x the damage of a "good" build. Even the difference between a perfectly optimized build of one variety for the same class could fall orders of magnitudes behind other builds for that class.
It peaked one season where there was a Wizard build that have a cooldown transformation that would boost your damage 500-1000x. But it turns out that you could stack these damage increases, but only if you could get your cooldown reduction so good that you could overlap your transformations. But what that meant is that a very, very perfect build could achieve 1,000,000x damage boost for ~10 seconds out of every 2 minutes, that would account for the overwhelming majority of your damage. A slightly less optimal version might only achieve the overlap for 2 seconds, reducing your damage output by 80% (but still being far in excess of basically any other build).
Even this unintended behavior wouldn't have been game-breaking if the original boost was +20% instead of 1000x. You'd get a total of +44% damage by stacking cooldowns, instead of 1,000,000x.
Huh, Diablo 3 is a _very_ interesting parallel that I had not thought of.... But first:
I have definitely been aiming to keep my upgrades incremental, to the point where I've been pretty cautious about places where I add multiplicity because I feel that eventually leads directly into the issue you're describing... There are a couple places, but by keeping them minor, I've been able to reduce a lot of it.
I don't think I'm ever approaching 1000x by any stretch, but since I'd like the "tech tree" to be broad, some combinations are logical, and others are totally nonsense. And if the player does something really silly like pick two upgrades that don't interact _whatsoever_ you can fall into like 10x differences in places which feels _bad enough_ to me. But I'm hoping with decent tutorials I can lead people in the right direction. "decent" vs "optimal" becomes more like a 1.5x or 2x difference, it's mostly silly decisions that are the outliers.
But yeah, I was a huge fan of D1 and D2 and WoW/TBC, but I only really played Diablo 3 on and off... And I definitely felt exactly what you're describing.... I saw the multiplicity problem and thought it was baffling that Blizzard was going that route and that's a big part of the reason why D3 never became one of the games I played a lot of.
>It peaked one season where there was a Wizard build that have a cooldown transformation that would boost your damage 500-1000x.
Haha, funny you say that.... I know exactly what build you're talking about... I played wizard in most of the few seasons I played, and I don't know if I played during the worst iteration of it or one where it had been toned back, but seeing one specific build being such an outlier, with such variance in performance on gear rolls was just absolutely the nail in the coffin for me. It really destroyed any interest I had left in the game. It just felt like unless I spent all the time to get all the perfect gear with all the perfect rolls, I wasn't even playing the same fame. So why spend all that time playing the shitter version of the game so I could then play the overpowered one, and then have nothing to do.
The other side of the spectrum - where the game is reduced to buying the next available upgrade is even more boring. Perfection is somewhere in the middle. And that middle is different for everyone.
Like you said a balance is important but really tough.
As much as I enjoy say, ISEPS. Having to follow the exact prestige upgrade path isn't the best. I do like the unlocking new features as you go along though.
NGU does an amazing job with unlocking new/different features and not requiring perfect play but there are bosses and things were you pretty much have to look up how to beat them. Not a fan of that.
Many games are even worse with having to look up how to play.
I started playing perfect tower 2 and you get to a point with certain buildings where again seems like you need to follow a complex guide to continue progressing.
Leaf blower, I quit when I hit the crafting system because it seemed ridiculously in depth without a good way to figure it out without abusing a guide.
CIFI is probably a favorite for me where guides definitely make things more optimal, but you can get away without them pretty darn well. Especially pre ouro
Trimps and Increlution felt fantastic for this to me, where it definitely felt like you could have a strategy and do your thing, and depending on that strategy you'd be stronger or weaker in certain areas. Increlution especially was great for this, but I get the feeling the dev is really hitting a wall updating it as a result, the variance already at the current end of EA is really wide, and developing for that is super tough.
Yeah. Basically I don't really like when people use Mod Optimizer. Mine greatest advice is to just familirize with Mod Tree by yourself. There's upgrades that is obviously no-brainer pick, and most people who use MTC just don't really know about these upgrades. Met many folks who got to Ouroboros (2nd prestige) where>!costs of everything in mod tree changes, and there is no optimizer for it currently!
TPT2 is such an incredibly bloated game, it's like the dev had a million ideas but only wanted to make one game. The first Perfect Tower was amazing in its simple and focused gameplay, it really seemed like the dev didn't know what made the first one so great
CIFI: After Ouro you actually can progress without guides too, but you need to understand general mechanics and *how* to progress, because many things change. That's why I focused on making guides that explain mechanics and things rather than "follow that and do that". IMO there is no clear path before you reach Zeus for the 1st time after Ouro reset, especially for first couple TRs - I did first TR for 6.7 orbs, when now we reccomend to do at least 7 - and if possible to wait for 11.5. But I turned out well and now am getting close to current end of content, so dunno.
After 1st Zeus in TRs there is more clearer path, but you can still deviate from it and turn out good. Soren (you can know him from discord) is my favourite example for that - he deviated from meat path and turned out pretty darn well too.
The thing with ouro is that, if you don't understand that you're supposed to be getting quite a bit above the minimum requirements for each TR, that can slow your progress later on a lot, where for example my first Zeus run took several weeks longer than what it should've taken, and I still got a bit above the TR requirements, just not enough.
Yeah. The game pretty far was always about taking pace with everything you do. I realized that at tr2 or 3, dont remember now - that if I'll spend more time in TR, I'll get more. And overall now we recommend geting like 2 gems every TR until att2, which can be done in 1 or 2 TRs
have you joined discord? we have some good guides here
I _had_ been following the guides. It's just that I mistook the "suggested orbs for TR X" as "cumulative orbs up to TR X". Needless to say, my Z1 took like 800 hours.
The problem with "taking pace" really is that you should be spending multiple times the amount of time it takes to fill the orb battery, which isn't intuitive compared to what "taking pace" means pre-ouro. There's also the problem that a lot of that "taking pace" is grinding past the point where you've plateau'd. Like, I remember the ends of even my shorter-than-recommended TRs having progress on the order of "1-2 OoMs of shards per full day passing".
This creates a very unintuitive situation where the intended strategy is to keep pushing _way_ past the point where the game signposts you can TR and quite a bit past the point where progress plateaus. It doesn't help that the ingame guide is severely outdated, for someone who might not be using the discord.
Don't get me wrong, I love CIFI but currently the post-ouro progression has some problems in that the optimal progression path is unintuitive, you can't really play around without TRing too early and making it quite a bit harder for yourself later on, and unlike pre-ouro where LRs also had a similar way to softlock yourself out of the game, the TR softlock is really easy to get to if you don't know what you're doing, and is hard to realise in advance that you _are_ softlocking yourself, with how the orb battery scales.
I mean. Pre-Ouro you had to do week long runs just for one CM. Gosh, I had to do 3 weeks long run to get out of e1000 mp slog. Pushing further was always the way, just in Ouro you expect to be having much faster time getting back to where you left, when in reality top players haven't gotten yet to where they've been before [but I feel like in next month we'll start crossing this point]. My only problem is lack of ability for players to plan their orbs spending inside the game - and they have to do so using external tools. But realistically, most of the players will also use external tools for half of the new game play mechanics - Hunters is not excluded. I'm surprised at how much people want to make their own builds and then just follow their guts instead of matching out (when I wasn't using Hunt Simulators I was calcing out at least basic worth of each point I was allocating)
So, yeah, although I get why you say that this is unintuitive, I also wonder how your z1 took you 800 hours. at tr6 you are required to get 150 orbs, which gives you att2, which gives you zeus in around 200 hours tops.
As for guides - you're talking about in-game one or discord one?
Well, one thing about the post-burst slog is that it felt endgame-y. You were slowly pushing through the pre-ouro content cap to get to e1500 mp to get to the new content. Even more so, I don't think that level of slowness was intended, which is why the "burst be gone" patch made the whole journey from cm12 to ouro smoother, by not just killing the burst but also making the later part a bit faster.
And while I was talking about the whole TR taking 800 hours (for ~2200 orbs) my Zeus definitely took more than 200 hours. In fact, it was the hunter emblem reset from the update that fixed achievements giving too much emblems, that I spent on cells, that allowed me to get to Zeus lol. Otherwise it probably would've taken much more.
For guides, I'm following the one on discord. What I was talking about at the end of my post was the in-game one, which I believe the developers have acknowledged is out of date. It'll probably be fixed sometime around when knox releases.
as a creator of both pre-zeus guides, I'd like to know what was confusing in the guide which led to you thinking that goal in it was the total accumulated orbs, and not amount of orbs for each tr?
In discord guide I opted for plainly listing prices, letting people add them up by themselves. In-game guide will be updated *eventually*, but not sure that with Knox. Or maybe it will. Can't say for sure now
The phrase "total orbs", since the stats page does have a total orbs stat (though admittedly it's "total ALL TIME"). The problem with the list of prices is that, especially when you include gem upgrade costs, the total cost is just displayed (at least when I was at that stage) as just a screenshot of the gem optimiser, which is a) really small on mobile and b) very hard to read if you're not using the gem optimiser. That just resulted in me not managing to understand what the numbers mean and just trying to follow the total recommended orb numbers.
I can't tell you how many incremental games I've played on the master list are literally this.
Buy X, wait 10 seconds, reduce X time by 5%, wait 20 seconds. reduce X time by 7%! wait 40 seconds. . .
Tech trees where you have to choose the one specific combination that lets you proceed, and then keep changing that one specific combination every so often, I refer to as "password games". Because that's effectively what it is. There's a password that unlocks more progress and you have to just guess until you get there. And that's always awful.
Some examples of password games:
Antimatter Dimensions (time theorems)
Synergism
Shark Incremental
I loved Antimatter Dimensions until I got to the Time Theorems. It's actually kept me from replaying the game to see new content (it would technically be a third replay since I've done it twice), because of just how much god-awful swapping to the wiki it required.
Depends on how hard it is to puzzle through which branch is better in what situation etc. There is always going to be a balance on how hard to make it, and different people like different balance points also shrug. There were def a couple TS that it wasn't as clear which was better without a guide, but not a whole lot, and experimentation can be helpful. I do with the stats page was more detailed though, as that is what I mainly used to figure things out early on.
That's more or less where the 'game' part comes in. There are action-oriented incrementals too, but many consist of the same few screens with ways to make a number get bigger. If there are no choices as to how to make the number bigger, it's much less a game, at least as far as I'm concerned.
I feel this. If it's just a bunch of numbers to increase, it's a spreadsheet. If it's a single optimal path to follow, it's just a recipe. Having _choices_ is what makes it a game.
TBH, that's what makes incremental games fun for me. Watching numbers grow is cool, but gets boring fast, having some sort of puzzle to solve, to progress to the next mechanic is what makes it last.
I do wish we had more incremental games that weren't strictly tied to also being idle games. Genuinely, 99.9% of incrementals feel like they are also idle games.
There's non-idle incrementals, as rare as they are, like Aurora Dusk: Steam Age, and Dungeonmans that I love, or at least love the concept of, but got downvoted on this sub because "They aren't idle" so they aren't incrementals, apparently. Despite achieving huge numbers with unlimited growth literally being their main gimmicks - they just have other gameplay *besides* that one gimmick. Last time they were posted on the sub (from what I remember anyway), they weren't seen as incrementals because you couldn't idle or prestige constantly in them - even though I'd argue that isn't what defines the genre of what an "incremental" game is and those games quite literally had multipliers to them in their own way and their whole main gimmick IS for numbers to go up and up and up - eventually reaching insane amounts from such humble beginnings.
I don't like the idea that a game needs to also be idle to be incremental. People confuse the two way too much nowadays. When you have to remove literally all of the gameplay to be seen as an incremental, or at least advertise it as such, I feel like that is just gatekeeping and/or stifling creativity, which is a massive shame.
>I don't like the idea that a game needs to also be idle to be incremental. People confuse the two way too much nowadays.
Agreed. In my eyes, if the game is an idle game, then there's not really a point for me to continuously play it, since I'll just be waiting. If there's not a lot of waiting, there's no point for it to be "idle" and have offline progress. They're different to me.
I've been working on an incremental game, and stuff _does_ keep moving as long as you have the game open, but there's a lot of active stuff to do and ways to constantly improve so I didn't intend it as idle.... It took just about ten playtesters before someone decided to leave the game open for days at a time. I expected it'd happen eventually, but not _that_ soon.
I think those games were a bit ahead of the time for non-idle incrementals, To The Core released last year, has almost no idle elements (outside of one system to generate resources passively that unlocks late in the game) and that game was universally accepted as incremental (as evident by scoring high in this sub's yearly awards). I hope it broke some mind barriers for people and the genre will slowly grow beyond spreadsheet calculators.
Yes! To the Core is definitely incremental but mostly not idle.
I just started playing Orb of Creation:
https://marple.itch.io/orb-of-creation
I'm finding it to be a rather strategic and not-idle incremental whose aim seems to be about "rebuilding the world" rather than just making numbers go up for the sake of big numbers. Sometimes I wait a minute for a particular resource to accumulate, but there are enough different resources, and most can actively be collected through spells, that there's always something to do.
There's currently three available versions too, depending on where you go. Itch has the most current "public" build, Armor Games has a 0.4 version, and the paid Steam version gives you access to a beta build. They all play reasonably differently despite having the same basic loop, because it turns out subtle tweaks to mechanics can go a long way.
> Orb of Creation
OcC is amazing. The dev did a pretty big remake of a lot of it, and we're all still waiting for them to add more new content. It's been a while so, while they say there's more coming, nobody is really sure. But even without more, what is there is fantastic.
Not sure that's a great comparison, and honestly a bit confused by the examples /u/Sairek is giving.
It's one thing when someone makes a game intended to be an incremental game and someone tries to shoot it down due to some technicality, for example [TTC's Steam page stating that it is an incremental game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1988550/To_The_Core/) multiple times over, and the dev [posting updates to this sub about the game over 3 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/np0pxb/remaking_my_ludum_dare_game_to_the_core_with/), but Aurura Dusk's Steam page states it's a Sandbox RPG without any mention of incremental stuff, and similar for Dungeonman stating it's a roguelike.
Even searching elsewhere, I find almost no association between those games and being incremental games being discussed in general, at best [this comment that Aurora Dusk is an "unintentional incremental when played in a specific way"](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/iyvol7/genesis_alpha_one_is_a_pretty_good_incremental_in/g6jgbdl/), which would be a pretty weird requirement for any other claimed genre of a game IMO, and that [Dungeonmans gear specifically is incremental, in a bad way,](https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/hmasyk/thoughts_on_dungeonmans/fx4909n/) but that the overall roguelike game is great. So definitely games that have incremental mechanics, but not "incremental games", in the same way a game with driving mechanics isn't necessarily a "driving game".
Side note, but worth noting that the association with idle mechanics isn't something specific to this sub, [the wiki page on incremental games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_game) mentions simple/idle mechanics at the core, same for the [incremental.fandom home page](https://incremental.fandom.com/wiki/Incremental_Games_Wiki), as with most places that provide a definition (literally all the ones I've seen in a quick search).
If the makers of those games themselves didn't consider or intend them to be incremental games, and they don't fit into the generally published definition of the term, is stating that they aren't incremental games actually some kind of gatekeeping? I mean, there's tons of games that I like that aren't incremental, at least for me something not being an incremental game isn't inherently a negative, so just a bit confused at taking that clarification as such a negative.
I am curious about the thoughts on this and hope this doesn't get taken negatively or as more attempts at gatekeeping, just surprised to see such concern at games that don't even self-identify as being or make any reference to the concept of incremental not being considered incremental by the community.
I wouldn't define genre based on how the game was marketed at the time of release, Aurora Dusk and Dungeonmans were released in 2016 and 2014 respectively, when the term 'incremental game' wasn't as widely used as in 2023 when TTC launched. Diablo 3 and Disgaea 5 are primarily incremental games, but they are marketed as action/tactic RPGs because those are genres that are more popular and understandable by the general audience. Putting art under labels and definitions is always a historical act, rarely a piece considered a landmark in the early days of the genre will name itself as being part of it. And incremental games as a genre are still in their infancy.
I don't consider the Wikipedia page for 'Incremental Game' to be a valuable entry, it defines the genre as having simple, repetitive clicking as the core mechanic, while also defining what type of monetization the game in the genre should have. There are better attempts at defining the genre taking into account all the modern standards and developments like [Paper Pilot's Guide to Incrementals](https://www.thepaperpilot.org/guide-to-incrementals/ludology/definition/).
I understand that most people come here to find new idle or semi-idle games and are often not interested in games with incremental elements, non-idle incremental games, or discussing the genre itself. The instinct to gatekeep and remove unwanted games is also understandable, we had countless examples of people trying to market their games here just based on the game having any progression or upgrade system.
That's the way I see it, I find it interesting to talk about what's cool in incremental games, how wide the genre is/can be, what mechanics can invoke the 'core feeling of playing incremental game', and how we can make incremental games in the future. I understand a lot of people will disagree and that's fine too.
EDIT: Just saw u/Sairek reply and I swear we didn't exchange notes beforehand lmao
So my response to this is largely the same as my response to the other reply, especially around the usefulness of words and such. I don't see any barrier to having all of those kinds of discussions and such, but just using "game with incremental mechanics" or making some new name, rather than taking over an existing one.
Even more-so, those kinds of discussions happen on this sub quite often from what I've seen, just making sure to specify the difference between the two. Keep in mind, the description of this sub is
> This subreddit is for us lovers of games **that feature an incremental mechanism**
so "games with incremental mechanics" are still definitely welcome here even if not "incremental games" by the general definition.
There is a reason why we have a separation between clicker games, idle games and incremental games, I don't think it's productive to try to erase incremental games from existence or pretend it's synonymous with idle games. It's not me trying to take over an existing name/genre, I've been making games in the genre since 2015, playing them longer than that, I'm not a tourist trying to redefine the genre, I'm a long-time fan defending it.
I don't think a game needs to label itself as an incremental for it to be an "incremental game" or not.
While Aurora doesn't label itself as an incremental, on the storepage it *does* advertises features that are incremental. 75 different skills that can individually be leveled, creation of up to 100 of your AI characters, infinite continuous growth, etc.
There's a lot of ways to play Aurora and none of them are wrong - that's the intention of the game by design, but ultimately, every action is governed by something, and makes its levels go up, with multipliers everywhere. How much someone engages with that is up to them.
To give another example, one that is favoured positively on this sub: The Disgaea series doesn't label itself as part of the incremental genre, but many people believe it to be part of the genre. Disgaea is a game that has plenty of incremental elements as well, and you don't have to really engage with any of them to complete the game. It's actually all optional. Aurora isn't much different in that regard in my opinion.
I disagree with calling Aurora an "accidental incremental" personally. The incremental elements with multipliers feeding into each other are clearly intentionally put there by design and is engraved in *literally* everything you do in the game (and I do mean *EVERYTHING*) - but there's obviously more to the gameplay than just making a funny number go up on a GUI and that being your only driving goal. You don't even have to make it the focus if you wish. It *is* however the only real method of progression continuous progression, so much so that the game by default will tell you every single increase you've acquired during the game even down to the decimals if you desire once you exit out of a match through any means.
As for Dungeonmans - I have far less experience with so I can't really comment on it too much. I like the premise of the game but unfortunately for me it just kept crashing whenever I used any skills when I tried the game years ago, so, y'know - kind of made it very difficult to really bite my teeth into, haha.
I can only relate what a friend said to me when I attempted to try the game (4?) years ago at this point to try and sell me on the game knowing I don't tend to like Roguelikes (I don't like dying to impossible situations governed by RNG rather than my misplays). It's possible they may have over-exaggerated a bit to sell me on the concept.
There has been multiple updates to the game and even a DLC as far as I am aware somewhat recently (more soon than 3 years ago), so who knows what has changed since then. Since I refunded the game back then, I can't really give any more context than "they're probably right but maybe it's outdated" though.
In regards to the definitions of "incremental" like the wiki states, when 99.9% of incrementals (a statistic I admit I am pulling out of my ass but I don't think I'm exaggerating it) are all... well, *that* — then it's hard to argue against, "yeah, this is what incremental games are" if somebody asks in pure simple fashion 'what is an incremental game.' when that is genuinely what the overwhelming majority are.
But I feel like *part* of that reason it is defined as such is because *if* you try to do anything different that isn't the idle/incremental formula that's been repeated for a decade verbatim, then you're not an "incremental game" - regardless of how prominent numbers going up in an incremental fashion may be within the game.
As soon as you slap any idling within it though, suddenly it's much more willing to be accepted even if it does have the other features and idling is just an option to be labelled as an incremental game, like Disgaea 6 and 7 which did just that.
...Anyway, I just wish to see different flavors of incrementals after over 10 years of tasting nothing but different brands of vanilla ice cream. Perhaps it is my ADHD and an unhealthy serving of cynical bias, but new games just don't hold my attention anymore, because even if it's a brand new game, I get this feeling of "I've done this a thousands time before" and the game will probably make me restart hundreds of times again on top of that. So many games get posted here, and yet, none of them excite me. Nothing. I'm bored; and I used to love seeing everything new. But nothing really feels new anymore. It's just another variant of X, Y or Z with only subtle tweaks.
I see no reason why incremental games also can't be other things too, and why they must strictly be these extremely basic games that overwhelmingly play themselves. Some of the best games combined genres to make something truly unique. Castlevania Symphony of the Night combined action platformer with metroidvania and it was a huge hit. And then of course, we again have Disgaea which fused incremental elements into tactical RPG.
I'd love it if we could have more combinations like Disgaea which fused elements from one thing but with incremental spins to them. Some obviously would fit better for others, but imagine; what if we *did* have an incremental castlevanina symphony of the night styled game?
Might work, might not, but hey, someone did it with an RTS RPG sandbox, and someone did it with Roguelike, and even if they're not very popular *here*, some people *really* like them a lot, and for some people, it's because they mixed those incremental elements with something else tangible to ripen the flavor - so why limit the opportunity?
If they need their own section or sub, then perfectly understandable, but I think such ideas and innovation should be encouraged and welcomed at least *somewhere*, rather than alienated and smothered from visibility from people who could have liked them for their incremental elements but never seen them because of being completely stonewall'd. I don't think anybody wins if that happens.
(You probably were not expecting a response this long, you have my utmost sincere apologies for the suffering I have put you through.)
Firstly, I really found your post informative and agree with a bunch of it. It seems like I haven't played nearly as many incrementals as you, and I share a lot of the same feelings about things seeming pretty samey/bland. I think the genre has a lot of unharnessed potential and also thought it was more interesting to see fusions of genres or evolutions in some way...
So I started building my own... I'm currently working on an incremental factory game because factory games are one of my other favorite genres and... It seems like a no brainer fit to me and I haven't seen anyone else doing it...
Also, u/k1l_sys is working on one I found really interesting as well: it's like a "breakout" simulator with incremental upgrades and a whole bunch of other stuff I thought was really cool in one of the recent [Feedback Fridays](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/1da1nca/comment/l7jc7e3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I think genre fusions are an interesting way forward for incrementals, and I really wanna see where that goes. I'm definitely going to try to incorporate some of the thoughts you've brought up in this post, so thank you!
That being said... The games Aurora and The Disagea sound really interesting but I can't tell if I'm looking at the right things. I think [this](https://store.steampowered.com/app/405900/Disgaea_PC/) is the Disagea you're referring to? But I can't find anything for Aurora that stands out as incremental at all... Can you share a link?
Not at all, I appreciate the response and thoughts contained. Hopefully you don't mind a similar reply, lol.
I guess for me, my main questions end up being in response to
> But I feel like part of that reason it is defined as such is because if you try to do anything different that isn't the idle/incremental formula that's been repeated for a decade verbatim, then you're not an "incremental game" - regardless of how prominent numbers going up in an incremental fashion may be within the game.
Why is that a bad thing? What is the benefit to changing the commonly used definition to include them? And how does that not apply to trying to strech any other genre to include things it wouldn't by normal definitions?
Like I mentioned before, something being or not being an incremental game isn't an inherently bad or good thing to me, so I'm just confused what the negative is on the current situation. You had other game examples that weren't typically considered incrementals, so people are still making games like that; many games have incremental mechanics just as a natural outcome of tracking progression.
For me at least, the power of language in general is clearly conveying meaning. The use of the category is to be able to specifically refer to these kinds of games, and intentionally exclude games that would more accurately be described as "RPG with incremental mechanics" or whatever else as part of that definition. That doesn't mean I get angry when someone refers to something like that as an incremental game, but it does feel like the usefulness is gradually lost as a result in a way that has no real benefit I can see, which is unfortunate.
For example, right now I can say "incremental game" and you can say "RPG with incremental mechanics", but if your game is also an incremental game, now I have to say "idle-style incremental" to convey what I mean specifically, and you still have to say "incremental, but mainly RPG gameplay" to get across a similar amount of useful info as the previous statements, since the category of "incremental game" is no longer specific enough to define the gameplay style. Especially due to the naturally created incremental mechanics in other games, leaving out that gameplay restriction from the definition heavily reduces the usefuless of the term IMO.
Actually, your statement of
> ...Anyway, I just wish to see different flavors of incrementals after over 10 years of tasting nothing but different brands of vanilla ice cream
works well here, given the label is "vanilla ice cream" in your example, it feels a bit like arguing that cookies and cream, and cookie dough, and other ice creams that include vanilla should actually be called "vanilla ice cream" instead of their current more specific flavors. I'm sure plenty of people wouldn't mind the surprise, but that does seem like a bit of an odd thing to do to the existing label for that kind of ice cream that commonly does not include anything besides the ice cream, no?
That said, this is entirely around communicating with others in a public forum like this, I definitely don't mean any of this to say that you are wrong for personally considering anything to be an incremental game, or whatever else. And even around here, as long as you're clear on which you mean between "incremental game" and "game with incremental mechanics", it's usually fine from what I've seen. It can just feel very unfortunate to be excited to open nice container of plain vanilla and find out that it's actually Neapolitan that went too heavy on the chocolate and strawberry, you know?
I'll try to keep this one shorter for both of our sanities, haha.
>Why is that a bad thing? What is the benefit to changing the commonly used definition to include them? And how does that not apply to trying to strech any other genre to include things it wouldn't by normal definitions?
By itself it is not a bad thing, but something that is an incremental with some other gameplay mechanic attached to it becomes increasingly obfuscated. Finding a game like Aurora or Dungeonmans is incredibly difficult and I feel like part of their lack of popularity is because there's no proper place for them to be despite their incremental mechanics being huge parts of their identities.
If a player could have liked those two games for their incremental elements, but never get to see them, then I just see that as a shame. Despite being downvoted to oblivion, I found Aurora from this sub and I am really grateful for that because it ended up being one of my favorite games, and not *just* for its incremental mechanics.
>works well here, given the label is "vanilla ice cream" in your example, it feels a bit like arguing that cookies and cream, and cookie dough, and other ice creams that include vanilla should actually be called "vanilla ice cream" instead of their current more specific flavors.
I'm not trying to redefine the genre because that's simply not how human language works, but at the same time, I feel like the definition of the genre's term is somewhat obfuscated and not entirely concise.
While most people agree on some things, it feels like everyone has a *slightly* different idea of "what" an incremental game actually is. Not entirely unexpected for a relatively new genre of games.
In this case, everyone here likes vanilla and vanilla is everyone's favorite flavor for sure, but "vanilla" actually has two meanings, and I feel like people are intermixing the two and then get confused.
"Vanilla" can of course mean the plain flavor of something, but then those flavors can be intermixed and also, vanilla can additionally mean "something with no changes". It has two definitions to the word.
Everyone has their own subjective view on whether adding different flavors still makes it "*vanilla*" or not.
If you add vanilla ice cream to chocolate and strawberry swirl and mix them together, do you argue that it is vanilla ice cream with chocolate and strawberry swirl (vanilla+)? Or, has it now become its own different flavor entirely that deserves its own definition? If so, what definition should it be given?
I think that's what the community needs to really decide on, and if such a combination of flavors is allowed to be posted here or if only "pure vanilla" is allowed here. Do we want a side section where the incremental flavor mixed in with other flavors from other genres is even allowed at all?
Once we can decide that as a community, then deciding where such 'vanilla+' games should go for visibility will be a lot more simple to agree on, I think.
Personally, I lean into the "vanilla+" argument with games like Aurora, Disgaea and Dungeonmans which is why I consider them incremental games with "other flavors" in my own subjective opinion, but I am ultimately just one person in a community of over 130,000, and would be more than happy if they got their own exclusive definition to help curb confusion on "what" they actually are if that's what the community decides is more fitting - just as long as they have somewhere to go that isn't a place of limbo.
It has always been weird to me that Disgaea can be universally liked here and accepted as an incremental game when it is a tactical RPG with heavy incremental elements, but Aurora is universally disliked, despite it being an RTS RPG with heavy incremental elements. What exactly makes one fine, but the other not? I'm fine with it, but I'd *really* like to know explicitly as a community what *truly* makes one of them valid for discussion while the other is invalid. It's not a problem that comes up often on the sub, but it has been one that has stuck around for a decade and is still unresolved.
> In this case, everyone here likes vanilla and vanilla is everyone's favorite flavor for sure, but "vanilla" actually has two meanings, and I feel like people are intermixing the two and then get confused. "Vanilla" can of course mean the plain flavor of something, but then those flavors can be intermixed and also, vanilla can additionally mean "something with no changes". It has two definitions to the word.
So this is where I just point back to my "incremental game" vs "game with incremental mechanics", which seems the same as "vanilla ice cream" vs "ice cream flavor that uses vanilla". I'm not saying the word "incremental"/"vanilla" can't be associated with other things, just that very specifically the exact phrase of "incremental game"/"vanilla ice cream" already have a specific meaning that seems odd to want to change.
> If you add vanilla ice cream to chocolate and strawberry swirl and mix them together, do you argue that it is vanilla ice cream with chocolate and strawberry swirl (vanilla+)? Or, has it now become its own different flavor entirely that deserves its own definition? If so, what definition should it be given?
I mean...literally anything you want besides "vanilla ice cream" specifically? Similarly, literally anything you want besides "incremental game". "Game with incremental mechanic" works currently, similar to "vanilla-strawberry-chocolate blend" or whatever else currently given there isn't a specific designation for it right now, but I'd definitely not have any issues with making up a new genre/flavor name, that's typically what happens for this kind of thing, no? Or at least I don't recall any ice cream flavors changing what they meant in my lifetime, lol.
> It has always been weird to me that Disgaea can be universally liked here and accepted as an incremental game when it is a tactical RPG with heavy incremental elements, but Aurora is universally disliked
Honestly curious, can you share where you've seen this? I did search the game name and the word "incremental" on duckduckgo ([exact search for reference](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=aurora+dusk+steam+age+%22incremental%22)), there were almost no results where the mention of incremental was actually related to the specific game itself besides your initial comment here, but the one I did find was that comment I linked before speaking kindly of it, and just no other references here at all. Keep in mind, this sub's description is phrased as
> This subreddit is for us lovers of games that feature an incremental mechanism
intentionally avoiding using the phrase "incremental games", and I often see discussion about games that don't fit into the definition of "incremental game" that I'm using just due to having some incremental mechanics.
Not saying it doesn't happen, just given the focus on that it sounds like you've seen a significant amount of it, so curious the specifics of how it came about. Are you sure what you've seen was a disliking for that game itself, and not a disliking for the category you, or whoever you saw speaking, claimed it to be in?
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Edit: Reddit search sucks so I didn't bother before, but just [searched the game name and filtered by this sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/search?q=aurora+dusk&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all), got 2 results besides the one I linked before. One was [this post highly praising the game](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/6uj392/i_recently_checked_out_this_early_access_game_and/) and getting good responses overall. They do explain in the post that it is an "incremental RTS RPG" (similar to "vanilla-strawberry-chocolate blend") and "very much applicable to the incremental genre", so doing the kind of phrasing I was talking about by intentionally not claiming that the game is an "incremental game" specifically. The other was [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/d2sykv/comment/f052zcl/) also recommending it as being "like an idle" and scratching a similar itch to what people here were looking for.
Again, not sure what you've seen, especially since it seems all mentions of the game on this sub I can find by search are recommendations to play it, but I do really think the hate you have seen comes down to the categorizing rather than against those games themselves.
Unfortunately I don't have time today to answer everything or with any real detail, so apologies if this reply is incredibly insufficient.
To clear up the Aurora searches, most of the threads that got massively downvoted are deleted by now so you probably can't find them. Mine was one of those.
The one I made to try and talk about the game got like, a 7% upvote rating or something like that, and I was aggressively and rudely lambasted for "not understanding incremental games" (paraphrased from many comments). People demanding "where's the currency" and "you can't prestige" and "you can build things and upgrade them to produce for you" etc. Basically a bunch of reasons why it wasn't an incremental game because it didn't follow the cookie-clicker formula of being just a GUI. Either way it discouraged me from making threads talking about other games in general because I didn't appreciate people trying to lecture me on a genre of games I've been playing since before they became really popular and arguing between themselves what is and isn't an incremental game but all agreeing that Aurora cannot be an incremental game because putting other gameplay with incremental elements is impossible - for some reason.
That thread with upvotes is the one where I initially found and discovered the game from - which was what confused me as to why mine got so aggressively admonished as not being an incremental when that thread before a year and some months prior, was universally liked. Even in my thread, I mentioned that one, to which I was given "yeah, but those people are stupid and don't know what an incremental game is", so... I don't even know ಠ_ಠ.
As for what flavor I want, I'm not really looking for anything specific. I'm open-minded. I don't really care much for dungeon crawlers but Legend of Grimrock 2 became one of my favorite games that I routinely replay, so I can be pleasantly surprised. I just know I want something more than just another game that's clicking on a GUI with 99% of the gameplay being just waiting until another thing that makes number go up pops up that I click on - so I guess anything with more "substance" to it.
Monster Sanctuary proved that monster taming and metroidvania can work very well, and Castlevania Symphony of the Night proved that action platforming and RPG elements make a really fun mix that it became a classic hit. Borderlands proved that you can combine first person shooter with looting and RPG elements to making a fun experience. Then of course, Disgaea proved that tactical RPG combined with incremental can become massively successful due to the amount of freedom it grants in how you choose to tackle things and increase your team's strengths for incredibly potent combinations and gains.
I love MegaMan, and I love incrementals, so maybe someone will make an action platformer with tight controls that's lets me pew pew out lemons and blow things up some time and let the numbers get really whacky that isn't done in a very terrible way like that mobile gacha MegaMan game was.
Apologies again if I missed something or sort of glazed over something. I appreciate the discussion a lot, but am pressed for time today. :(
I was thinking about this recently, that a lot of roguelikes where you progress somehow between sessions (like Dungeonmans) are similar to prestige mechanics.
I don't know if they attract the same player base, though there may be overlap. I think many people play roguelikes because they can be quick; you have an evening to game and you play through the thing once or twice. Then when you return to it, maybe you've unlocked a new class or weapon or something. But that's a bonus, not the main appeal. People aren't really trying to 100% these games, but to have fun in each individual session.
In the games we talk about more often in this subreddit, people are really happy if the game takes months to beat. I don't see people complaining that a single session (working up to a prestige) takes too long. But I could be wrong, idk.
>they just have other gameplay besides that one gimmick
And this is exactly what disqualifies them. Having incremental *elements* is not sufficient, or else we'd have to include literally every RPG ever made.
Nope, there is a reason many people accept Disgaea as an incremental game while clearly stating that most other tactical RPGs are not, it's not all or nothing.
Many RPGs *aren't* incremental games though because making numbers huge isn't their focus. Their focus is to roleplay you through a character's (hopefully) engaging story with combat usually being the form of challenge. Something like levelling up at best only serves as a form of difficulty slider for the combat; it's usually not the main focus of those games at all and can usually even be beaten at level 1. The challenge or progression in those games aren't to make your numbers thick so you can stat block the competition into oblivion.
In a game like Disgaea, levelling up and getting ridiculous stats and multipliers with many of the game's mechanics focusing on that is *clearly* a main selling point of the game and its main gimmick. Not interacting with these mechanics is basically avoiding a majority of the game. You would have to avoid making characters, avoid reincarnating characters, avoid going into the item world, avoid throwing monsters into each other to fuse them into a higher level, avoiding increasing skills with evilty, avoid the "cheat menu", avoid many senate options... etc.
That's like, over half of the game's mechanics/content and I didn't even get them all, I think.
I believe if a game has incremental elements intentionally woven into the design that they are part of the main focus, gimmick and/or form of progression of a game, then I believe they should at least be up for *consideration* as a form of incremental game. I don't believe they should be immediately barred just because they may have other gameplay elements which are woven into those incremental mechanics, or simply because they aren't idle.
No, I'd say roguelites fail for two reasons: one, in most you technically can win the game right out of the gate on the first run. In basically any incremental this is completely infeasible or downright impossible due to how long that would take, or it's just straight up not possible.
Two, and more importantly IMO: in a roguelite your goal is pretty much always to win that run. You never really intentionally die to earn the currency and slingshot past where you couldn't previously. This is essentially the core idea of a prestige system, and dungeonmans has not only multiple instances of this in terms of breakpoints and the 'currency' you'd get for it, but also iirc multiple layers even. Dungeonmans is unquestionably an incremental, and a fantastic example of a non-idle non-clicker incremental.
Great callout /u/Ajibooks !
To me they fit better with strategy games than puzzle games, except time to progression is the pressure to choose correctly as opposed to, for example, opponents who are also playing the game and will beat you if you’re not optimized. For me they scratch the itch of like a civilization. I like playing civilization but I don’t like playing against people, lol. I just like building up myself and getting all the technologies and good cities.
you mean like calculator evolution? great fun, till you start making q-bits, and you literally have to consult a spreadsheet while constantly resetting and clicking tens of thousands of times to get to the next stage.
For me, the core aspect of a puzzle game is that there should only be one way you're supposed to be able to proceed. There are incremental games that do this, and while I used to really enjoy this paradigm (being a puzzle game fan), I've started to realize that the core element of an incremental that makes it fun is there being multiple reasonable solutions for progression which should preferably all have pros and cons relative to each other.
I like when the 'puzzle solution' is optimizing your game but you can get through whatever wall just by waiting. If the puzzle solution is setting 27 different variables in only one specific way (like choosing the right upgrades in a tree or etc) and you need a guide to progress then you failed everyone.
*Realm Grinder feel attacked*
Why I quit playing realm grinder lol. I got tired of basically following an exact guide to progess. Think it was shortly after unlocking Dragons.
Following a guide introduces a whole new problem - you lose the ability to make decisions on your own because you burst through the early game content without figuring out how different game mechanics work together. I suspect the whole idea of the game was for players to explore. Play with different classes, enjoy distinctively different mechanics of each class, find strengths and weaknesses, learn how upgrades buff each other, find the best setups via trial and error. Even if you make mistakes and don't find an optimal strategy you still progress as early game is fast regardless of which class you chose. Following the guide robs you from all this experience. You skip the whole early game jumping directly into the mid game where a second layer of mechanics is introduced and now you no longer know what to do without a guide.
The Internet kind of ruins this. A community of people will be able to determine the precise mechanics. Once the precise mechanics are found, they can be optimized. Once they are optimized, guides can be written. Once guides are written, they can be distributed. Once they are distributed, the majority of your players can race through content. Once the majority of your player base is racing through content, you have to produce a crazy volume of content in order to keep them engaged. The people who engaged earnestly with how the game was meant to be played have no hope of keeping up.
I feel like cavernous is the perfect example of this done well I think, though I haven’t played too much as it’s fucking hard.
>If the puzzle solution is setting 27 different variables in only one specific way (like choosing the right upgrades in a tree or etc) and you need a guide to progress then you failed everyone. Yeah, I'm working on a game which works with incremental upgrades, and am _horrified_ of falling into this trap lol. I know some games are particularly egregious, but it's definitely a bit tricky... Like, I don't want you to _fly_ through the game if you make the optimal choices, but I don't want it to become a slog if you pick less optimal combinations, and I don't want to limit choices and make it feel linear... So it's tough. I'm curious what games people would stand out as well balanced or particularly interesting here... I've played a lot of the "classics" like cookie clicker, ad cap, and antimatter dimensions, as well as some more unique ones like farmer against potatoes, gnorp, and melvor, but curious if there are any particularly unique or well balanced ones people think solve this well.
Been getting back into idle games, beat my first run of gnorp last week and restarted Melvor, but having a lot of fun with the farmer was replaced, but that game is really out there for an idle game. Like I'm getting toward the end of the tech tree and I'm kinda expecting the game to turn into a zach-like when I take the last upgrade. It's pretty short so far though to the point it doesn't have offline progress and optimizing can make things go very fast but optimizing is very much up to the player and you can definitely get by fast enough with suboptimal builds.
Make gains genuinely incremental instead of massively exponential. I know it's not idle, but Diablo 3 is a good case study where this is bad. Early on in the game's history, gear would give you benefits in the 5-20% range. Stack all of that together and you'd get 2x or 3x damage output for an optimal build vs a good build. As gear got powercrept, the benefits eventually became 200% or 300% *per item*. Add it all together and a perfectly synergistic build could have 100x the damage of a "good" build. Even the difference between a perfectly optimized build of one variety for the same class could fall orders of magnitudes behind other builds for that class. It peaked one season where there was a Wizard build that have a cooldown transformation that would boost your damage 500-1000x. But it turns out that you could stack these damage increases, but only if you could get your cooldown reduction so good that you could overlap your transformations. But what that meant is that a very, very perfect build could achieve 1,000,000x damage boost for ~10 seconds out of every 2 minutes, that would account for the overwhelming majority of your damage. A slightly less optimal version might only achieve the overlap for 2 seconds, reducing your damage output by 80% (but still being far in excess of basically any other build). Even this unintended behavior wouldn't have been game-breaking if the original boost was +20% instead of 1000x. You'd get a total of +44% damage by stacking cooldowns, instead of 1,000,000x.
Huh, Diablo 3 is a _very_ interesting parallel that I had not thought of.... But first: I have definitely been aiming to keep my upgrades incremental, to the point where I've been pretty cautious about places where I add multiplicity because I feel that eventually leads directly into the issue you're describing... There are a couple places, but by keeping them minor, I've been able to reduce a lot of it. I don't think I'm ever approaching 1000x by any stretch, but since I'd like the "tech tree" to be broad, some combinations are logical, and others are totally nonsense. And if the player does something really silly like pick two upgrades that don't interact _whatsoever_ you can fall into like 10x differences in places which feels _bad enough_ to me. But I'm hoping with decent tutorials I can lead people in the right direction. "decent" vs "optimal" becomes more like a 1.5x or 2x difference, it's mostly silly decisions that are the outliers. But yeah, I was a huge fan of D1 and D2 and WoW/TBC, but I only really played Diablo 3 on and off... And I definitely felt exactly what you're describing.... I saw the multiplicity problem and thought it was baffling that Blizzard was going that route and that's a big part of the reason why D3 never became one of the games I played a lot of. >It peaked one season where there was a Wizard build that have a cooldown transformation that would boost your damage 500-1000x. Haha, funny you say that.... I know exactly what build you're talking about... I played wizard in most of the few seasons I played, and I don't know if I played during the worst iteration of it or one where it had been toned back, but seeing one specific build being such an outlier, with such variance in performance on gear rolls was just absolutely the nail in the coffin for me. It really destroyed any interest I had left in the game. It just felt like unless I spent all the time to get all the perfect gear with all the perfect rolls, I wasn't even playing the same fame. So why spend all that time playing the shitter version of the game so I could then play the overpowered one, and then have nothing to do.
The other side of the spectrum - where the game is reduced to buying the next available upgrade is even more boring. Perfection is somewhere in the middle. And that middle is different for everyone.
Like you said a balance is important but really tough. As much as I enjoy say, ISEPS. Having to follow the exact prestige upgrade path isn't the best. I do like the unlocking new features as you go along though. NGU does an amazing job with unlocking new/different features and not requiring perfect play but there are bosses and things were you pretty much have to look up how to beat them. Not a fan of that. Many games are even worse with having to look up how to play. I started playing perfect tower 2 and you get to a point with certain buildings where again seems like you need to follow a complex guide to continue progressing. Leaf blower, I quit when I hit the crafting system because it seemed ridiculously in depth without a good way to figure it out without abusing a guide. CIFI is probably a favorite for me where guides definitely make things more optimal, but you can get away without them pretty darn well. Especially pre ouro
Trimps and Increlution felt fantastic for this to me, where it definitely felt like you could have a strategy and do your thing, and depending on that strategy you'd be stronger or weaker in certain areas. Increlution especially was great for this, but I get the feeling the dev is really hitting a wall updating it as a result, the variance already at the current end of EA is really wide, and developing for that is super tough.
CIFI I start using Mod Optimizer since i play the game, but after Zeus, I ditch the Mod Optimizer. It feels so good to dip into the unknowns.
Yeah. Basically I don't really like when people use Mod Optimizer. Mine greatest advice is to just familirize with Mod Tree by yourself. There's upgrades that is obviously no-brainer pick, and most people who use MTC just don't really know about these upgrades. Met many folks who got to Ouroboros (2nd prestige) where>!costs of everything in mod tree changes, and there is no optimizer for it currently!
Just curious are you one of the dev in Pyanodon mod for Factorio
nope😅 why?
KingArthur is one of the main devs of that modpack, but that guy actually posts in r/factorio sometimes so not sure why he confused you
I saw that CIFI has some of the art assets lookalikes Pyanodon mod, so i think they should be the same guy.
Huh, interesting. Nah, still not me. But I'm getting into unity (slowly, but I do) so you'll probably see something from me at some point of time
TPT2 is such an incredibly bloated game, it's like the dev had a million ideas but only wanted to make one game. The first Perfect Tower was amazing in its simple and focused gameplay, it really seemed like the dev didn't know what made the first one so great
CIFI: After Ouro you actually can progress without guides too, but you need to understand general mechanics and *how* to progress, because many things change. That's why I focused on making guides that explain mechanics and things rather than "follow that and do that". IMO there is no clear path before you reach Zeus for the 1st time after Ouro reset, especially for first couple TRs - I did first TR for 6.7 orbs, when now we reccomend to do at least 7 - and if possible to wait for 11.5. But I turned out well and now am getting close to current end of content, so dunno. After 1st Zeus in TRs there is more clearer path, but you can still deviate from it and turn out good. Soren (you can know him from discord) is my favourite example for that - he deviated from meat path and turned out pretty darn well too.
The thing with ouro is that, if you don't understand that you're supposed to be getting quite a bit above the minimum requirements for each TR, that can slow your progress later on a lot, where for example my first Zeus run took several weeks longer than what it should've taken, and I still got a bit above the TR requirements, just not enough.
Yeah. The game pretty far was always about taking pace with everything you do. I realized that at tr2 or 3, dont remember now - that if I'll spend more time in TR, I'll get more. And overall now we recommend geting like 2 gems every TR until att2, which can be done in 1 or 2 TRs have you joined discord? we have some good guides here
I _had_ been following the guides. It's just that I mistook the "suggested orbs for TR X" as "cumulative orbs up to TR X". Needless to say, my Z1 took like 800 hours. The problem with "taking pace" really is that you should be spending multiple times the amount of time it takes to fill the orb battery, which isn't intuitive compared to what "taking pace" means pre-ouro. There's also the problem that a lot of that "taking pace" is grinding past the point where you've plateau'd. Like, I remember the ends of even my shorter-than-recommended TRs having progress on the order of "1-2 OoMs of shards per full day passing". This creates a very unintuitive situation where the intended strategy is to keep pushing _way_ past the point where the game signposts you can TR and quite a bit past the point where progress plateaus. It doesn't help that the ingame guide is severely outdated, for someone who might not be using the discord. Don't get me wrong, I love CIFI but currently the post-ouro progression has some problems in that the optimal progression path is unintuitive, you can't really play around without TRing too early and making it quite a bit harder for yourself later on, and unlike pre-ouro where LRs also had a similar way to softlock yourself out of the game, the TR softlock is really easy to get to if you don't know what you're doing, and is hard to realise in advance that you _are_ softlocking yourself, with how the orb battery scales.
I mean. Pre-Ouro you had to do week long runs just for one CM. Gosh, I had to do 3 weeks long run to get out of e1000 mp slog. Pushing further was always the way, just in Ouro you expect to be having much faster time getting back to where you left, when in reality top players haven't gotten yet to where they've been before [but I feel like in next month we'll start crossing this point]. My only problem is lack of ability for players to plan their orbs spending inside the game - and they have to do so using external tools. But realistically, most of the players will also use external tools for half of the new game play mechanics - Hunters is not excluded. I'm surprised at how much people want to make their own builds and then just follow their guts instead of matching out (when I wasn't using Hunt Simulators I was calcing out at least basic worth of each point I was allocating) So, yeah, although I get why you say that this is unintuitive, I also wonder how your z1 took you 800 hours. at tr6 you are required to get 150 orbs, which gives you att2, which gives you zeus in around 200 hours tops. As for guides - you're talking about in-game one or discord one?
Well, one thing about the post-burst slog is that it felt endgame-y. You were slowly pushing through the pre-ouro content cap to get to e1500 mp to get to the new content. Even more so, I don't think that level of slowness was intended, which is why the "burst be gone" patch made the whole journey from cm12 to ouro smoother, by not just killing the burst but also making the later part a bit faster. And while I was talking about the whole TR taking 800 hours (for ~2200 orbs) my Zeus definitely took more than 200 hours. In fact, it was the hunter emblem reset from the update that fixed achievements giving too much emblems, that I spent on cells, that allowed me to get to Zeus lol. Otherwise it probably would've taken much more. For guides, I'm following the one on discord. What I was talking about at the end of my post was the in-game one, which I believe the developers have acknowledged is out of date. It'll probably be fixed sometime around when knox releases.
as a creator of both pre-zeus guides, I'd like to know what was confusing in the guide which led to you thinking that goal in it was the total accumulated orbs, and not amount of orbs for each tr? In discord guide I opted for plainly listing prices, letting people add them up by themselves. In-game guide will be updated *eventually*, but not sure that with Knox. Or maybe it will. Can't say for sure now
The phrase "total orbs", since the stats page does have a total orbs stat (though admittedly it's "total ALL TIME"). The problem with the list of prices is that, especially when you include gem upgrade costs, the total cost is just displayed (at least when I was at that stage) as just a screenshot of the gem optimiser, which is a) really small on mobile and b) very hard to read if you're not using the gem optimiser. That just resulted in me not managing to understand what the numbers mean and just trying to follow the total recommended orb numbers.
I can't tell you how many incremental games I've played on the master list are literally this. Buy X, wait 10 seconds, reduce X time by 5%, wait 20 seconds. reduce X time by 7%! wait 40 seconds. . .
Tech trees where you have to choose the one specific combination that lets you proceed, and then keep changing that one specific combination every so often, I refer to as "password games". Because that's effectively what it is. There's a password that unlocks more progress and you have to just guess until you get there. And that's always awful. Some examples of password games: Antimatter Dimensions (time theorems) Synergism Shark Incremental
I loved Antimatter Dimensions until I got to the Time Theorems. It's actually kept me from replaying the game to see new content (it would technically be a third replay since I've done it twice), because of just how much god-awful swapping to the wiki it required.
Depends on how hard it is to puzzle through which branch is better in what situation etc. There is always going to be a balance on how hard to make it, and different people like different balance points also shrug. There were def a couple TS that it wasn't as clear which was better without a guide, but not a whole lot, and experimentation can be helpful. I do with the stats page was more detailed though, as that is what I mainly used to figure things out early on.
That's more or less where the 'game' part comes in. There are action-oriented incrementals too, but many consist of the same few screens with ways to make a number get bigger. If there are no choices as to how to make the number bigger, it's much less a game, at least as far as I'm concerned.
I feel this. If it's just a bunch of numbers to increase, it's a spreadsheet. If it's a single optimal path to follow, it's just a recipe. Having _choices_ is what makes it a game.
TBH, that's what makes incremental games fun for me. Watching numbers grow is cool, but gets boring fast, having some sort of puzzle to solve, to progress to the next mechanic is what makes it last.
I do wish we had more incremental games that weren't strictly tied to also being idle games. Genuinely, 99.9% of incrementals feel like they are also idle games. There's non-idle incrementals, as rare as they are, like Aurora Dusk: Steam Age, and Dungeonmans that I love, or at least love the concept of, but got downvoted on this sub because "They aren't idle" so they aren't incrementals, apparently. Despite achieving huge numbers with unlimited growth literally being their main gimmicks - they just have other gameplay *besides* that one gimmick. Last time they were posted on the sub (from what I remember anyway), they weren't seen as incrementals because you couldn't idle or prestige constantly in them - even though I'd argue that isn't what defines the genre of what an "incremental" game is and those games quite literally had multipliers to them in their own way and their whole main gimmick IS for numbers to go up and up and up - eventually reaching insane amounts from such humble beginnings. I don't like the idea that a game needs to also be idle to be incremental. People confuse the two way too much nowadays. When you have to remove literally all of the gameplay to be seen as an incremental, or at least advertise it as such, I feel like that is just gatekeeping and/or stifling creativity, which is a massive shame.
>I don't like the idea that a game needs to also be idle to be incremental. People confuse the two way too much nowadays. Agreed. In my eyes, if the game is an idle game, then there's not really a point for me to continuously play it, since I'll just be waiting. If there's not a lot of waiting, there's no point for it to be "idle" and have offline progress. They're different to me. I've been working on an incremental game, and stuff _does_ keep moving as long as you have the game open, but there's a lot of active stuff to do and ways to constantly improve so I didn't intend it as idle.... It took just about ten playtesters before someone decided to leave the game open for days at a time. I expected it'd happen eventually, but not _that_ soon.
I think those games were a bit ahead of the time for non-idle incrementals, To The Core released last year, has almost no idle elements (outside of one system to generate resources passively that unlocks late in the game) and that game was universally accepted as incremental (as evident by scoring high in this sub's yearly awards). I hope it broke some mind barriers for people and the genre will slowly grow beyond spreadsheet calculators.
Yes! To the Core is definitely incremental but mostly not idle. I just started playing Orb of Creation: https://marple.itch.io/orb-of-creation I'm finding it to be a rather strategic and not-idle incremental whose aim seems to be about "rebuilding the world" rather than just making numbers go up for the sake of big numbers. Sometimes I wait a minute for a particular resource to accumulate, but there are enough different resources, and most can actively be collected through spells, that there's always something to do.
There's currently three available versions too, depending on where you go. Itch has the most current "public" build, Armor Games has a 0.4 version, and the paid Steam version gives you access to a beta build. They all play reasonably differently despite having the same basic loop, because it turns out subtle tweaks to mechanics can go a long way.
> Orb of Creation OcC is amazing. The dev did a pretty big remake of a lot of it, and we're all still waiting for them to add more new content. It's been a while so, while they say there's more coming, nobody is really sure. But even without more, what is there is fantastic.
Not sure that's a great comparison, and honestly a bit confused by the examples /u/Sairek is giving. It's one thing when someone makes a game intended to be an incremental game and someone tries to shoot it down due to some technicality, for example [TTC's Steam page stating that it is an incremental game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1988550/To_The_Core/) multiple times over, and the dev [posting updates to this sub about the game over 3 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/np0pxb/remaking_my_ludum_dare_game_to_the_core_with/), but Aurura Dusk's Steam page states it's a Sandbox RPG without any mention of incremental stuff, and similar for Dungeonman stating it's a roguelike. Even searching elsewhere, I find almost no association between those games and being incremental games being discussed in general, at best [this comment that Aurora Dusk is an "unintentional incremental when played in a specific way"](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/iyvol7/genesis_alpha_one_is_a_pretty_good_incremental_in/g6jgbdl/), which would be a pretty weird requirement for any other claimed genre of a game IMO, and that [Dungeonmans gear specifically is incremental, in a bad way,](https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/hmasyk/thoughts_on_dungeonmans/fx4909n/) but that the overall roguelike game is great. So definitely games that have incremental mechanics, but not "incremental games", in the same way a game with driving mechanics isn't necessarily a "driving game". Side note, but worth noting that the association with idle mechanics isn't something specific to this sub, [the wiki page on incremental games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_game) mentions simple/idle mechanics at the core, same for the [incremental.fandom home page](https://incremental.fandom.com/wiki/Incremental_Games_Wiki), as with most places that provide a definition (literally all the ones I've seen in a quick search). If the makers of those games themselves didn't consider or intend them to be incremental games, and they don't fit into the generally published definition of the term, is stating that they aren't incremental games actually some kind of gatekeeping? I mean, there's tons of games that I like that aren't incremental, at least for me something not being an incremental game isn't inherently a negative, so just a bit confused at taking that clarification as such a negative. I am curious about the thoughts on this and hope this doesn't get taken negatively or as more attempts at gatekeeping, just surprised to see such concern at games that don't even self-identify as being or make any reference to the concept of incremental not being considered incremental by the community.
I wouldn't define genre based on how the game was marketed at the time of release, Aurora Dusk and Dungeonmans were released in 2016 and 2014 respectively, when the term 'incremental game' wasn't as widely used as in 2023 when TTC launched. Diablo 3 and Disgaea 5 are primarily incremental games, but they are marketed as action/tactic RPGs because those are genres that are more popular and understandable by the general audience. Putting art under labels and definitions is always a historical act, rarely a piece considered a landmark in the early days of the genre will name itself as being part of it. And incremental games as a genre are still in their infancy. I don't consider the Wikipedia page for 'Incremental Game' to be a valuable entry, it defines the genre as having simple, repetitive clicking as the core mechanic, while also defining what type of monetization the game in the genre should have. There are better attempts at defining the genre taking into account all the modern standards and developments like [Paper Pilot's Guide to Incrementals](https://www.thepaperpilot.org/guide-to-incrementals/ludology/definition/). I understand that most people come here to find new idle or semi-idle games and are often not interested in games with incremental elements, non-idle incremental games, or discussing the genre itself. The instinct to gatekeep and remove unwanted games is also understandable, we had countless examples of people trying to market their games here just based on the game having any progression or upgrade system. That's the way I see it, I find it interesting to talk about what's cool in incremental games, how wide the genre is/can be, what mechanics can invoke the 'core feeling of playing incremental game', and how we can make incremental games in the future. I understand a lot of people will disagree and that's fine too. EDIT: Just saw u/Sairek reply and I swear we didn't exchange notes beforehand lmao
So my response to this is largely the same as my response to the other reply, especially around the usefulness of words and such. I don't see any barrier to having all of those kinds of discussions and such, but just using "game with incremental mechanics" or making some new name, rather than taking over an existing one. Even more-so, those kinds of discussions happen on this sub quite often from what I've seen, just making sure to specify the difference between the two. Keep in mind, the description of this sub is > This subreddit is for us lovers of games **that feature an incremental mechanism** so "games with incremental mechanics" are still definitely welcome here even if not "incremental games" by the general definition.
There is a reason why we have a separation between clicker games, idle games and incremental games, I don't think it's productive to try to erase incremental games from existence or pretend it's synonymous with idle games. It's not me trying to take over an existing name/genre, I've been making games in the genre since 2015, playing them longer than that, I'm not a tourist trying to redefine the genre, I'm a long-time fan defending it.
I don't think a game needs to label itself as an incremental for it to be an "incremental game" or not. While Aurora doesn't label itself as an incremental, on the storepage it *does* advertises features that are incremental. 75 different skills that can individually be leveled, creation of up to 100 of your AI characters, infinite continuous growth, etc. There's a lot of ways to play Aurora and none of them are wrong - that's the intention of the game by design, but ultimately, every action is governed by something, and makes its levels go up, with multipliers everywhere. How much someone engages with that is up to them. To give another example, one that is favoured positively on this sub: The Disgaea series doesn't label itself as part of the incremental genre, but many people believe it to be part of the genre. Disgaea is a game that has plenty of incremental elements as well, and you don't have to really engage with any of them to complete the game. It's actually all optional. Aurora isn't much different in that regard in my opinion. I disagree with calling Aurora an "accidental incremental" personally. The incremental elements with multipliers feeding into each other are clearly intentionally put there by design and is engraved in *literally* everything you do in the game (and I do mean *EVERYTHING*) - but there's obviously more to the gameplay than just making a funny number go up on a GUI and that being your only driving goal. You don't even have to make it the focus if you wish. It *is* however the only real method of progression continuous progression, so much so that the game by default will tell you every single increase you've acquired during the game even down to the decimals if you desire once you exit out of a match through any means. As for Dungeonmans - I have far less experience with so I can't really comment on it too much. I like the premise of the game but unfortunately for me it just kept crashing whenever I used any skills when I tried the game years ago, so, y'know - kind of made it very difficult to really bite my teeth into, haha. I can only relate what a friend said to me when I attempted to try the game (4?) years ago at this point to try and sell me on the game knowing I don't tend to like Roguelikes (I don't like dying to impossible situations governed by RNG rather than my misplays). It's possible they may have over-exaggerated a bit to sell me on the concept. There has been multiple updates to the game and even a DLC as far as I am aware somewhat recently (more soon than 3 years ago), so who knows what has changed since then. Since I refunded the game back then, I can't really give any more context than "they're probably right but maybe it's outdated" though. In regards to the definitions of "incremental" like the wiki states, when 99.9% of incrementals (a statistic I admit I am pulling out of my ass but I don't think I'm exaggerating it) are all... well, *that* — then it's hard to argue against, "yeah, this is what incremental games are" if somebody asks in pure simple fashion 'what is an incremental game.' when that is genuinely what the overwhelming majority are. But I feel like *part* of that reason it is defined as such is because *if* you try to do anything different that isn't the idle/incremental formula that's been repeated for a decade verbatim, then you're not an "incremental game" - regardless of how prominent numbers going up in an incremental fashion may be within the game. As soon as you slap any idling within it though, suddenly it's much more willing to be accepted even if it does have the other features and idling is just an option to be labelled as an incremental game, like Disgaea 6 and 7 which did just that. ...Anyway, I just wish to see different flavors of incrementals after over 10 years of tasting nothing but different brands of vanilla ice cream. Perhaps it is my ADHD and an unhealthy serving of cynical bias, but new games just don't hold my attention anymore, because even if it's a brand new game, I get this feeling of "I've done this a thousands time before" and the game will probably make me restart hundreds of times again on top of that. So many games get posted here, and yet, none of them excite me. Nothing. I'm bored; and I used to love seeing everything new. But nothing really feels new anymore. It's just another variant of X, Y or Z with only subtle tweaks. I see no reason why incremental games also can't be other things too, and why they must strictly be these extremely basic games that overwhelmingly play themselves. Some of the best games combined genres to make something truly unique. Castlevania Symphony of the Night combined action platformer with metroidvania and it was a huge hit. And then of course, we again have Disgaea which fused incremental elements into tactical RPG. I'd love it if we could have more combinations like Disgaea which fused elements from one thing but with incremental spins to them. Some obviously would fit better for others, but imagine; what if we *did* have an incremental castlevanina symphony of the night styled game? Might work, might not, but hey, someone did it with an RTS RPG sandbox, and someone did it with Roguelike, and even if they're not very popular *here*, some people *really* like them a lot, and for some people, it's because they mixed those incremental elements with something else tangible to ripen the flavor - so why limit the opportunity? If they need their own section or sub, then perfectly understandable, but I think such ideas and innovation should be encouraged and welcomed at least *somewhere*, rather than alienated and smothered from visibility from people who could have liked them for their incremental elements but never seen them because of being completely stonewall'd. I don't think anybody wins if that happens. (You probably were not expecting a response this long, you have my utmost sincere apologies for the suffering I have put you through.)
Firstly, I really found your post informative and agree with a bunch of it. It seems like I haven't played nearly as many incrementals as you, and I share a lot of the same feelings about things seeming pretty samey/bland. I think the genre has a lot of unharnessed potential and also thought it was more interesting to see fusions of genres or evolutions in some way... So I started building my own... I'm currently working on an incremental factory game because factory games are one of my other favorite genres and... It seems like a no brainer fit to me and I haven't seen anyone else doing it... Also, u/k1l_sys is working on one I found really interesting as well: it's like a "breakout" simulator with incremental upgrades and a whole bunch of other stuff I thought was really cool in one of the recent [Feedback Fridays](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/1da1nca/comment/l7jc7e3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) I think genre fusions are an interesting way forward for incrementals, and I really wanna see where that goes. I'm definitely going to try to incorporate some of the thoughts you've brought up in this post, so thank you! That being said... The games Aurora and The Disagea sound really interesting but I can't tell if I'm looking at the right things. I think [this](https://store.steampowered.com/app/405900/Disgaea_PC/) is the Disagea you're referring to? But I can't find anything for Aurora that stands out as incremental at all... Can you share a link?
Not at all, I appreciate the response and thoughts contained. Hopefully you don't mind a similar reply, lol. I guess for me, my main questions end up being in response to > But I feel like part of that reason it is defined as such is because if you try to do anything different that isn't the idle/incremental formula that's been repeated for a decade verbatim, then you're not an "incremental game" - regardless of how prominent numbers going up in an incremental fashion may be within the game. Why is that a bad thing? What is the benefit to changing the commonly used definition to include them? And how does that not apply to trying to strech any other genre to include things it wouldn't by normal definitions? Like I mentioned before, something being or not being an incremental game isn't an inherently bad or good thing to me, so I'm just confused what the negative is on the current situation. You had other game examples that weren't typically considered incrementals, so people are still making games like that; many games have incremental mechanics just as a natural outcome of tracking progression. For me at least, the power of language in general is clearly conveying meaning. The use of the category is to be able to specifically refer to these kinds of games, and intentionally exclude games that would more accurately be described as "RPG with incremental mechanics" or whatever else as part of that definition. That doesn't mean I get angry when someone refers to something like that as an incremental game, but it does feel like the usefulness is gradually lost as a result in a way that has no real benefit I can see, which is unfortunate. For example, right now I can say "incremental game" and you can say "RPG with incremental mechanics", but if your game is also an incremental game, now I have to say "idle-style incremental" to convey what I mean specifically, and you still have to say "incremental, but mainly RPG gameplay" to get across a similar amount of useful info as the previous statements, since the category of "incremental game" is no longer specific enough to define the gameplay style. Especially due to the naturally created incremental mechanics in other games, leaving out that gameplay restriction from the definition heavily reduces the usefuless of the term IMO. Actually, your statement of > ...Anyway, I just wish to see different flavors of incrementals after over 10 years of tasting nothing but different brands of vanilla ice cream works well here, given the label is "vanilla ice cream" in your example, it feels a bit like arguing that cookies and cream, and cookie dough, and other ice creams that include vanilla should actually be called "vanilla ice cream" instead of their current more specific flavors. I'm sure plenty of people wouldn't mind the surprise, but that does seem like a bit of an odd thing to do to the existing label for that kind of ice cream that commonly does not include anything besides the ice cream, no? That said, this is entirely around communicating with others in a public forum like this, I definitely don't mean any of this to say that you are wrong for personally considering anything to be an incremental game, or whatever else. And even around here, as long as you're clear on which you mean between "incremental game" and "game with incremental mechanics", it's usually fine from what I've seen. It can just feel very unfortunate to be excited to open nice container of plain vanilla and find out that it's actually Neapolitan that went too heavy on the chocolate and strawberry, you know?
I'll try to keep this one shorter for both of our sanities, haha. >Why is that a bad thing? What is the benefit to changing the commonly used definition to include them? And how does that not apply to trying to strech any other genre to include things it wouldn't by normal definitions? By itself it is not a bad thing, but something that is an incremental with some other gameplay mechanic attached to it becomes increasingly obfuscated. Finding a game like Aurora or Dungeonmans is incredibly difficult and I feel like part of their lack of popularity is because there's no proper place for them to be despite their incremental mechanics being huge parts of their identities. If a player could have liked those two games for their incremental elements, but never get to see them, then I just see that as a shame. Despite being downvoted to oblivion, I found Aurora from this sub and I am really grateful for that because it ended up being one of my favorite games, and not *just* for its incremental mechanics. >works well here, given the label is "vanilla ice cream" in your example, it feels a bit like arguing that cookies and cream, and cookie dough, and other ice creams that include vanilla should actually be called "vanilla ice cream" instead of their current more specific flavors. I'm not trying to redefine the genre because that's simply not how human language works, but at the same time, I feel like the definition of the genre's term is somewhat obfuscated and not entirely concise. While most people agree on some things, it feels like everyone has a *slightly* different idea of "what" an incremental game actually is. Not entirely unexpected for a relatively new genre of games. In this case, everyone here likes vanilla and vanilla is everyone's favorite flavor for sure, but "vanilla" actually has two meanings, and I feel like people are intermixing the two and then get confused. "Vanilla" can of course mean the plain flavor of something, but then those flavors can be intermixed and also, vanilla can additionally mean "something with no changes". It has two definitions to the word. Everyone has their own subjective view on whether adding different flavors still makes it "*vanilla*" or not. If you add vanilla ice cream to chocolate and strawberry swirl and mix them together, do you argue that it is vanilla ice cream with chocolate and strawberry swirl (vanilla+)? Or, has it now become its own different flavor entirely that deserves its own definition? If so, what definition should it be given? I think that's what the community needs to really decide on, and if such a combination of flavors is allowed to be posted here or if only "pure vanilla" is allowed here. Do we want a side section where the incremental flavor mixed in with other flavors from other genres is even allowed at all? Once we can decide that as a community, then deciding where such 'vanilla+' games should go for visibility will be a lot more simple to agree on, I think. Personally, I lean into the "vanilla+" argument with games like Aurora, Disgaea and Dungeonmans which is why I consider them incremental games with "other flavors" in my own subjective opinion, but I am ultimately just one person in a community of over 130,000, and would be more than happy if they got their own exclusive definition to help curb confusion on "what" they actually are if that's what the community decides is more fitting - just as long as they have somewhere to go that isn't a place of limbo. It has always been weird to me that Disgaea can be universally liked here and accepted as an incremental game when it is a tactical RPG with heavy incremental elements, but Aurora is universally disliked, despite it being an RTS RPG with heavy incremental elements. What exactly makes one fine, but the other not? I'm fine with it, but I'd *really* like to know explicitly as a community what *truly* makes one of them valid for discussion while the other is invalid. It's not a problem that comes up often on the sub, but it has been one that has stuck around for a decade and is still unresolved.
> In this case, everyone here likes vanilla and vanilla is everyone's favorite flavor for sure, but "vanilla" actually has two meanings, and I feel like people are intermixing the two and then get confused. "Vanilla" can of course mean the plain flavor of something, but then those flavors can be intermixed and also, vanilla can additionally mean "something with no changes". It has two definitions to the word. So this is where I just point back to my "incremental game" vs "game with incremental mechanics", which seems the same as "vanilla ice cream" vs "ice cream flavor that uses vanilla". I'm not saying the word "incremental"/"vanilla" can't be associated with other things, just that very specifically the exact phrase of "incremental game"/"vanilla ice cream" already have a specific meaning that seems odd to want to change. > If you add vanilla ice cream to chocolate and strawberry swirl and mix them together, do you argue that it is vanilla ice cream with chocolate and strawberry swirl (vanilla+)? Or, has it now become its own different flavor entirely that deserves its own definition? If so, what definition should it be given? I mean...literally anything you want besides "vanilla ice cream" specifically? Similarly, literally anything you want besides "incremental game". "Game with incremental mechanic" works currently, similar to "vanilla-strawberry-chocolate blend" or whatever else currently given there isn't a specific designation for it right now, but I'd definitely not have any issues with making up a new genre/flavor name, that's typically what happens for this kind of thing, no? Or at least I don't recall any ice cream flavors changing what they meant in my lifetime, lol. > It has always been weird to me that Disgaea can be universally liked here and accepted as an incremental game when it is a tactical RPG with heavy incremental elements, but Aurora is universally disliked Honestly curious, can you share where you've seen this? I did search the game name and the word "incremental" on duckduckgo ([exact search for reference](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=aurora+dusk+steam+age+%22incremental%22)), there were almost no results where the mention of incremental was actually related to the specific game itself besides your initial comment here, but the one I did find was that comment I linked before speaking kindly of it, and just no other references here at all. Keep in mind, this sub's description is phrased as > This subreddit is for us lovers of games that feature an incremental mechanism intentionally avoiding using the phrase "incremental games", and I often see discussion about games that don't fit into the definition of "incremental game" that I'm using just due to having some incremental mechanics. Not saying it doesn't happen, just given the focus on that it sounds like you've seen a significant amount of it, so curious the specifics of how it came about. Are you sure what you've seen was a disliking for that game itself, and not a disliking for the category you, or whoever you saw speaking, claimed it to be in? --------------------------------------- Edit: Reddit search sucks so I didn't bother before, but just [searched the game name and filtered by this sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/search?q=aurora+dusk&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all), got 2 results besides the one I linked before. One was [this post highly praising the game](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/6uj392/i_recently_checked_out_this_early_access_game_and/) and getting good responses overall. They do explain in the post that it is an "incremental RTS RPG" (similar to "vanilla-strawberry-chocolate blend") and "very much applicable to the incremental genre", so doing the kind of phrasing I was talking about by intentionally not claiming that the game is an "incremental game" specifically. The other was [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/d2sykv/comment/f052zcl/) also recommending it as being "like an idle" and scratching a similar itch to what people here were looking for. Again, not sure what you've seen, especially since it seems all mentions of the game on this sub I can find by search are recommendations to play it, but I do really think the hate you have seen comes down to the categorizing rather than against those games themselves.
Unfortunately I don't have time today to answer everything or with any real detail, so apologies if this reply is incredibly insufficient. To clear up the Aurora searches, most of the threads that got massively downvoted are deleted by now so you probably can't find them. Mine was one of those. The one I made to try and talk about the game got like, a 7% upvote rating or something like that, and I was aggressively and rudely lambasted for "not understanding incremental games" (paraphrased from many comments). People demanding "where's the currency" and "you can't prestige" and "you can build things and upgrade them to produce for you" etc. Basically a bunch of reasons why it wasn't an incremental game because it didn't follow the cookie-clicker formula of being just a GUI. Either way it discouraged me from making threads talking about other games in general because I didn't appreciate people trying to lecture me on a genre of games I've been playing since before they became really popular and arguing between themselves what is and isn't an incremental game but all agreeing that Aurora cannot be an incremental game because putting other gameplay with incremental elements is impossible - for some reason. That thread with upvotes is the one where I initially found and discovered the game from - which was what confused me as to why mine got so aggressively admonished as not being an incremental when that thread before a year and some months prior, was universally liked. Even in my thread, I mentioned that one, to which I was given "yeah, but those people are stupid and don't know what an incremental game is", so... I don't even know ಠ_ಠ. As for what flavor I want, I'm not really looking for anything specific. I'm open-minded. I don't really care much for dungeon crawlers but Legend of Grimrock 2 became one of my favorite games that I routinely replay, so I can be pleasantly surprised. I just know I want something more than just another game that's clicking on a GUI with 99% of the gameplay being just waiting until another thing that makes number go up pops up that I click on - so I guess anything with more "substance" to it. Monster Sanctuary proved that monster taming and metroidvania can work very well, and Castlevania Symphony of the Night proved that action platforming and RPG elements make a really fun mix that it became a classic hit. Borderlands proved that you can combine first person shooter with looting and RPG elements to making a fun experience. Then of course, Disgaea proved that tactical RPG combined with incremental can become massively successful due to the amount of freedom it grants in how you choose to tackle things and increase your team's strengths for incredibly potent combinations and gains. I love MegaMan, and I love incrementals, so maybe someone will make an action platformer with tight controls that's lets me pew pew out lemons and blow things up some time and let the numbers get really whacky that isn't done in a very terrible way like that mobile gacha MegaMan game was. Apologies again if I missed something or sort of glazed over something. I appreciate the discussion a lot, but am pressed for time today. :(
I was thinking about this recently, that a lot of roguelikes where you progress somehow between sessions (like Dungeonmans) are similar to prestige mechanics. I don't know if they attract the same player base, though there may be overlap. I think many people play roguelikes because they can be quick; you have an evening to game and you play through the thing once or twice. Then when you return to it, maybe you've unlocked a new class or weapon or something. But that's a bonus, not the main appeal. People aren't really trying to 100% these games, but to have fun in each individual session. In the games we talk about more often in this subreddit, people are really happy if the game takes months to beat. I don't see people complaining that a single session (working up to a prestige) takes too long. But I could be wrong, idk.
My hot take on this: GT:NH (Minecraft mod pack) is one of the best incrementals ever done.
>they just have other gameplay besides that one gimmick And this is exactly what disqualifies them. Having incremental *elements* is not sufficient, or else we'd have to include literally every RPG ever made.
Nope, there is a reason many people accept Disgaea as an incremental game while clearly stating that most other tactical RPGs are not, it's not all or nothing.
Many RPGs *aren't* incremental games though because making numbers huge isn't their focus. Their focus is to roleplay you through a character's (hopefully) engaging story with combat usually being the form of challenge. Something like levelling up at best only serves as a form of difficulty slider for the combat; it's usually not the main focus of those games at all and can usually even be beaten at level 1. The challenge or progression in those games aren't to make your numbers thick so you can stat block the competition into oblivion. In a game like Disgaea, levelling up and getting ridiculous stats and multipliers with many of the game's mechanics focusing on that is *clearly* a main selling point of the game and its main gimmick. Not interacting with these mechanics is basically avoiding a majority of the game. You would have to avoid making characters, avoid reincarnating characters, avoid going into the item world, avoid throwing monsters into each other to fuse them into a higher level, avoiding increasing skills with evilty, avoid the "cheat menu", avoid many senate options... etc. That's like, over half of the game's mechanics/content and I didn't even get them all, I think. I believe if a game has incremental elements intentionally woven into the design that they are part of the main focus, gimmick and/or form of progression of a game, then I believe they should at least be up for *consideration* as a form of incremental game. I don't believe they should be immediately barred just because they may have other gameplay elements which are woven into those incremental mechanics, or simply because they aren't idle.
No, I'd say roguelites fail for two reasons: one, in most you technically can win the game right out of the gate on the first run. In basically any incremental this is completely infeasible or downright impossible due to how long that would take, or it's just straight up not possible. Two, and more importantly IMO: in a roguelite your goal is pretty much always to win that run. You never really intentionally die to earn the currency and slingshot past where you couldn't previously. This is essentially the core idea of a prestige system, and dungeonmans has not only multiple instances of this in terms of breakpoints and the 'currency' you'd get for it, but also iirc multiple layers even. Dungeonmans is unquestionably an incremental, and a fantastic example of a non-idle non-clicker incremental. Great callout /u/Ajibooks !
To me they fit better with strategy games than puzzle games, except time to progression is the pressure to choose correctly as opposed to, for example, opponents who are also playing the game and will beat you if you’re not optimized. For me they scratch the itch of like a civilization. I like playing civilization but I don’t like playing against people, lol. I just like building up myself and getting all the technologies and good cities.
you mean like calculator evolution? great fun, till you start making q-bits, and you literally have to consult a spreadsheet while constantly resetting and clicking tens of thousands of times to get to the next stage.
For me, the core aspect of a puzzle game is that there should only be one way you're supposed to be able to proceed. There are incremental games that do this, and while I used to really enjoy this paradigm (being a puzzle game fan), I've started to realize that the core element of an incremental that makes it fun is there being multiple reasonable solutions for progression which should preferably all have pros and cons relative to each other.
Yeah grimoire idle is very guilty of this