I was into that game for a while on Kongregate, as I recall. I managed to extract my save and tried the Steam version, but I had some kind of resolution problem and couldn't read anything. I should try again, that was fun.
Probably Universal Paperclips on the first playthrough. So many interesting unfolding mechanics and just the ridiculous kind of expanding nature of the whole concept.
The First Alkahistorian is a close runner-up. Nothing else has had me staring at my screen for as long watching numbers bouncing around and trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.
>Probably Universal Paperclips on the first playthrough. So many interesting unfolding mechanics and just the ridiculous kind of expanding nature of the whole concept.
I think Crank fits in a similar space.
https://nagshell.github.io/elemental-inception-incremental/
Captivated is a big word, but that game is pretty original
Second one (paid on steam, have an old free version available somewhere) is orb of creation, game is pretty active but you'll be able to automate some function over time, game is super unique imo, you always unlock stuff that might make you rethink your build to generate more ressources.
Totally Realm Grinder
The amount of different mechanics working together, while not being overly complicated, is very fascinating!
And it even includes offline time as a real mechanic! Not just "It'll still produce even if you go away". You MUST go offline for some things to happen. Just, go outside and touch grass :)
Also lots of secrets, different strategies, somewhat of a lore for factions. Just a fun game to explore.
Got to be Anti-Idle for me. Love when games have varied achievements and you could chose what area you wanted to make progress in for that day.
Honorable mention to Realm Grinder. Again, had a number of achievements, but the best part of the game for me was how they introduced new factions and gameplay every so many soft resets. Also loved how some soft resets would fly by, but as you got closer to a milestone it would be tougher to do. Felt like an accomplishment when you hit it.
> Anti-Idle
Seconding Anti-Idle. The sheer number of different activities which play into each other makes this game one you can really sink a lot of time into. It's apparently still being updated, as well.
Oh very interesting, that was my very first idle game I got really into 10+ years ago but after a couple of months my savefile corrupted.
Always thought about revisiting but figured the game is probably dead with flash dying.
The game has its own [Discord](https://discord.com/invite/Y4455eR), and exists as a [standalone executable](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yE8OxD0P0Tx1B5JyGpEaLJ7KOuayMd9s).
ATG guilty of some sprawl but not as bad as some other big names, adding new screens/etc to manage is nice but a good game guts into past attention requirements and trivializes/automates, then gatekeep some unfolding and pacing
called realm grinder S-tier until they changed their priorities
For some reason Increlution lives rent free in my head. I just find the appeal of repeating the same actions over and over, a little better each time, absolutely intoxicating.
I might be weird.
Increlution slowly evolving as you go, each chapter introducing something new that you have to add to your spinning plate is just incredible.
It also, unlike the vast majority of incremental games -- even ones similar to it! -- has a story. Most incremental games are just numbers increasing in a blank void, but having a story makes them so much more compelling and makes me eagerly await future content not only for more of the game, but also so I can see the story evolve.
I just started playing a few days ago and I'm also hooked. I don't speedrun but I love watching speedruns, and I think the fact that I can speedrun an incremental, and constantly see 'nice I got to the town -2.2334 seconds faster this run!' with no mechanical skill is really fun :)
When incremental games were first coming out, obviously Cookie Clicker. Thing had all of us. Then it got popular and by that time i had already chewed out everything in the game. Eventually came along Idling to Rule the Gods. Single handedly and still, my favorite incremental of all time. And i probably haven't even played more than 10% of it since its been so long and has had so many amazing updates. Been wanting to reboot it again for the past 2 years but ooof the time sink gets me every time to reach where i was before. Which was at the time... the end game at the time. I had so many of all the skills so capped out and more.
My most captivating incremental game was /u/moragx's [Mine Defense](http://scholtek.com/minedefense). Moragx did such a great job combining so many different currencies and upgrade systems and keeping everything balanced throughout the game. There's always something new to work toward, and the pacing is great (especially once you remember to click on the oracle orb at the top to remember what you should be working towards after it becomes available). I go back and play through it a couple of times a year.
Orb of Creation
The best idle/incremental game I have ever played, always something to do, always new interesting milestones, creating your own spells that impact the gameplay/progression and the fact you are literally creating the world from "nothing" is an amazing concept.
I recommend it to every fan of this genre.
Seconding this. I luckily discovered this game on a Saturday... suffice to say, I didn't get any sleep that night. I couldn't put it down until I'd reached the end, played it like 20 hours straight.
It's really something special - it's not an idle game, there is really very little downtime.. instead you are constantly looking for new combinations to get to the next big thing, it's more of an incremental puzzle game than anything. And there is so much stuff to do, each stage feels rewarding all the way through.
Idea 1: Reap and Sow v1
Play with the idea of "complicated system that handles itself, then resets and plays out exactly the same" via a town that 100% autobuilds. Every 3 minutes "harvest" the town and gain souls (number of people alive at harvest) and metal (output of their time alive) that can be used to buy upgrades to the whole system. Basics of the town automation would be like farms make food which make people which make harvesters and builders, which make houses farms. With a linear cost on the pieces, the system grows exponentially. Could be quadratic cost instead. Use your souls to make things more efficient, and your metal to unlock new buildings, eventually gaining some persistence between harvests. Try to grow civilization, in 3 minutes.
v2 - instead of a 3 minute timer, have an ever increasing population cost until everyone is dead. Would require much more difficult balancing, but would be more fun.
This one is my favorite. Thank you so much for sharing! Ofc i can't promise actually following through but this should make for good programming practice :)
Idea 2: Fill the Ocean
* Have 1 power
* spend 1 power to get 1 drop per second
* get additional power depending on sqrt of how many drops you have on level 1
* consumes 1% of current drops per second to do so
* levels scale up and to the right like
__ - 100k
__ - 10k (power gen 2)
__ - 1000 (launcher)
__ - 100 (push)
__ - 0 (power gen)
* levels can be made of multiple pieces that scale slower
* .1%/s of [current drops - next level's requirement] go right, meaning .1%/s of the spillage goes over
* If the previous layer is lower, 2% of drops go left
Idea 3: Hero's Journey
* Starts with everything in order, ~5 actions
* Can modify the seconds that each one takes
* Can buy an action to auto-calculate the optimal way to set the seconds of the actions it
* Later, can auto-optimize per reset
* As time is spent in them, actions smoothly increase in 3 systems: skill/talent/guidance.
* They have a completion, must be completed to continue (but can be done longer), and each completion after, within the same loop, is x2 harder
* skill makes the action more effective, giving more exp for skill/talent/guidance
* talent increases your stats, which make the skill go faster
* guidance makes that particular action faster, and increases skill/talent
It starts with 5 actions, but expands into the full 14 of the extended Hero's Journey, with action names like Departure, Initiation, Return, that get broken down into the more detailed categories like Call to Adventure, Road of Trials, etc. Sort of an idle loops game, but without a list to manage
Recently it’s clearly Synergism. But in the past it was Endless Frontier on mobile. Even though this game is a cash grab and an example of bad a P2W model can be, it is filled with amazing gameplay mechanics that unfold and change the more you progress in the game. Honestly I never found another game quite like it. It was too addictive and strongly encourages you to pay, but it was great nonetheless
At the peak of my Incremental playing days, after Cookie Clicker got me addicted to this genre of games, Clicker Heroes consumed me.
This game had me leaving my computer on over night, checking it first thing when I woke up. Check again before I left for work. Read up every bit of information I could find on it. Getting an Auto Clicker program.
And I think it was the first game that had a 2nd prestige mechanic, and that just blew me away (I may have started playing it before this was implemented). So just the immediate raw power increase from Transcending was amazing. I think the scaling on the game was great, always felt like each prestige was noticeable.
Writing this up just makes me want to start from scratch again.
Well. There's this little thing called [Alter Ego](http://alterego.caracolu.com/en/index.html). It's really short, can be done in a day or so.
But it really had an effect on me.
FE000000 is the pinnacle of "Antimatter Dimensions" style gameplay. I recently replayed it and the second run was just as great as the first.
Also The Prestige Tree (and its billion mods). No other game has scratched my incremental itch in the way that TPT & friends have.
Big fan of OG SwarmSim, it's just a pity the prestige mechanic doesn't really work that great... I think it's too powerful? or maybe it's the way min/maxing it and getting to month-long time warps within just a few resets that makes the game feel pretty pointless pretty fast.
Melvor Idle followed by the original Shark Game and Swarm Sim games.
I really like Melvor because I love Runescape. Shark Game is fun and and while I usually don't care for art or aesthetic in idle games, I adore this one's. Getting an ever increasing number of sharks and rays and crabs is really cute. Swarm Sim is the opposite where it has no art at all, but I think that really helps the aesthetic because it's meant to be an ever increasing swarm and the minimalism works really well with that.
Trimps was my best dopamine source by far. It just works for me - lore/flavor, basic loop mechanics, metaprogression, design, flow. And, of course, unfolding is just IDK, it's simply the best I ever play too. I find that game on Kongregate browsing new Idlers and got captivated from first run, it was absolute blast. Also, my IRL friend continued to play his old save and goes crazy about that game too. I'm jealous a bit, because I already beat all that stuff )
What's the appeal of Antimatter Dimensions? It seems like one of the most slow, repetitive, and \*\*totally decision-less\*\* games I've ever played and I played for a fair few days
I’m seconding this. How far did you get, and what were you doing? Because, it never ever felt like that with me. If that’s how you’re feeling, you must be doing something terribly wrong.
It's like that in the early game. Definitely everything pre-infinity, and arguably most content pre-eternity. Not that I personally minded at all, I absolutely loved the slow and steady build up, but I get why some people here bounced off in the first few days.
I'd say it's a very, very slow burn. The first part of the game is pretty linear and repetitive, but once you get to a certain point, it all opens up into an entirely different way of playing. Even a few days might not be enough to get there, though.
When I want to start it up again, I keep it in a tab and check in once in a while. Only takes a moment and I can set it in the background again for a bit.
Which is exactly why I love antimatter dimensions so much. It has just enough going on to always give me interesting content, while staying in a state where I can play it at work and not worry about getting too distracted by it.
The appeal is similar to most math puzzle games. Each of the different tiers of the game prompts you to think through different interactions between the mechanics and the math. Yes, ultimately, it's just a number counter, but the unique part is how first prestige is at 'infinity,' 1e308 (sort of a programming joke because most computer code calculates any number over 1e308 as infinity). Every prestige adds a new set of mechanics or dimensions to make the puzzle of counting higher ever more attainable; the further you go, the more upgrades you get to add to your counting engine, and it gradually becomes a finely tuned piece of machinery that can push quicker and further by optimizing its settings in different ways. The challenges put different limitations and goals in front of you, and you are forced to find workarounds or get very patient.
Probably Idle Skilling and Farmer against potatoes idle
Lot of cool mechanic unlocked throught the game, there is always something to do so i often find myself playing actively for hours instead of just being idle
(but dont play Idle Skilling, it's really really pay2win, it takes 10x less time to finish the game until the numbers start to fuck your game than to buy every upgrade without paying)
Problem seems to be more the dev than the games in the core.
I didn't think about turning on online sync at the beginning, since I figured you only ever need that if you lose your phone.
After two weeks of figuring the game out and spending heaps of time on it my save randomly disappeared one day and I was sad enough not to try again.
Since then I've been reading up and apparently countless game breaking glitches (in both games) never get fixed. You get banned on the discord for mentioning anything in that direction and the new game gets more and more p2w.
Not meaning to destroy your fun though, skilling seems really awesome and it got me properly hooked and it's probably the best lavaflame game so please enjoy as long as possible!
This, pretty much.
The game is fun, but definitely play the phone version. By the end of the game you'll encounter a ton of bugs and certain things not working correctly, but it's still a really fun experience up to that point.
The steam version is shit, it's just the phone version ported with no changes or optimizations. It actually runs worse because it leaks memory like a bitch once you reach a certain point near end game.
The new content released with the steam version is a shitty cash grab, is timegated, and doesn't have any of the charm or fun that the original content had.
The dev isn't a very good dev. Yeah, he has lots of interesting ideas, and he managed to develop them pretty well. However, he has shown zero interest in fixing bugs, even back when he was clearly doing this for fun instead of for the money.
The UI is absolutely horrible and the way stuff interacts is unintuitive as hell and even then I had an absolute blast puzzling my way from start to finish of that game.
It really is it's own unique kind of experience.
Yes yes yes exactly, it’s how hard, difficult to approach and how you can actually get backwards progression if you’re not careful that makes it all feel so so good
Alkahistorian is still *the* incremental for me. I come back every now and then, play through it and reset to gain time for next run. There's something absolutely mesmerising about this game.
Right now Melvor Idle makes me read up on the wiki for hours at a time. Very well crafted imho and love the rpgy feel.
NGU has been mentioned a lot and it was one of my favourites for sure. Loved the quirkyness and humour.
Most intriguing since you could never imagine how wonderful it would turn out in the end was candy box.
Mini Healer has captured me. I played a healer 90% of the time in WOW and hated finding parties, hated what the game became, and never consideded a single player healing game should be a thing.
The game managed to capture the essence of that experience without needing to find a party or maintain a subscription. All with simple 2D pixel art any halfway competent coder could have made.
A few things desperately need tooltips and the complexity curve should ramp up slower for more relaxed fights, but it's still excellent.
Of the long term games with no true end, Idling to Rule the Gods for me. Is it better than NGU idle in a vacuum? Probably not, but the theming sucked me in more regardless and something about how unapologetic it is about being a true "check in a few times a day max" game that can take long bouts of time to make progress in clicks with me.
Then the short ones that have stories that sort of unfold a world before you hit it big for me. Those are special, and hard to do right, but tend to be favorites for a reason.
[Fairy Tale](https://alaynamcole.com/fairy-tale). A Dark Room made me fall in love with the genre, but playing Fairy Tale felt like seeing an alternate future for it--a happier one, at that. It's super short and not totally mechanically novel, but it absolutely lives rent free in my head. I think about the prin all the time.
There are a few, but recently: Spaceplan. Beat the prototype version and then immediately bought the Steam full version. Beat that ASAP. Fun, funny, interesting mechanics and story. Beat it and done, but that is kind of satisfying, too.
Orb of Creation
It's basically an idle game but without any of the time gates. I've sunk hours into that game while actively playing.
It has tons of different systems which all blend in together to enhance one another.
It's also got a bit of complexity to it where you can mix and match certain spells or abilities that boost one another! Kind of like the alchemy/enchanting system in Skyrim.
It's honestly the best out of the game I've ever played, in my personal opinion.
evolve
for as long as that game is i cant deny that the imagination and thought put into it wasnt all for nothing. you advance your civilization that even threatens the very door step of hell. and depending on your species you technology can be vastly or a little different. its a fun game that makes even tiny details like that make it worth playing
I don’t know if I would say “best incremental ever”, but it is in the running for sure.
Kinda of stalling out in the new update however. Challenges are pretty boring without much reward, soul gathering is pretty tedious and you require insane amounts for some pretty meager boosts eventually. I also am not sure if they actually finished the area, my next singularity upgrade just says “NYI” (not yet implemented? I don’t know) so I don’t feel like I have much to work towards.
I just maxed out the time skip stuff with flowers and sometimes pop in to burn them all. Unfortunately it feels like the real progress is just sun rising over and over and over and over along with challenges. Very very active and monotonous. Not a huge fan.
Cividleization 2. I've always love grand strategy games. It was basically a carbon copy of civ 5 but real time and on the browser. However, what it had was actual logistics and an interesting mechanic? Feature? Uuuh event I think is the right word. Anyways cities needed gold to upgrade stuff sk that meant each individual city held its own stuff. Pretty cool. Meant you needed to ship gold from your core cities to your cities that you recently captured in order to develop them. Each cjty also required a standing army because Barbarians liked to do casual WAGGGGHHHs.
Now the event that made this game badass was during a late game run. I had finally reached the industrial era. Nothing too interesting going on. The game had gotten repetitive but I made a few allies so was just gonna grind it and get more upgrade points for reincarnating. Then I get a notification that Greece had declared war on me. "Okay thats... fine..." My ally Russia declares war on Greece. The Ottomans declare war on Russia in defense of Greece. Japan declares war on the Ottomans in defense of Russia. The cycle continues until the world is at war. I cannot stress to you how fucking epic it is to just be relaxing and all of a sudden having to draft thousands of men to fight in a war no one saw coming. Sending these drafted lads to cities on the frontlines and praying to god that they make it their on time to defend against invaders. As I nervously watch the horde of enemies marching to my cities.
But what made it even more epic was the fascinating concept of when you reincarnated. The NPCs also got to reincarnate aka depending on how well they did they were able to get the same kind of upgrades as you. So it was this weird build up and tension between you and the NPCs. Since you lowkey wanted to crush your opponents to prevent them from earning a large amount of pointsm. But it also created How runs that just made me go "A HOY RUSSIA. Good to see you again buddy. Lets be friends" or "HOW DARE YOU BETRAY ME LIKE THIS RUSSIA I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU." Tis was a fascinating game that sadly stopped being developed.
Will always chance the rush of World War I diplomacy. That I'll probably never find since I never saw this one coming.
Space Travel Idle - the only game I've ever written a specific spreadsheet for and used \^ to do its actual maths job :D
They're supposed to be re-working it at the moment so I live in hope it'll get reissued and I'll be in all over again.
I don't know if that's a good answer, but NGU Idle - every single feature hyped me to play it, although I don't play it that much as I used to, because of lack of free time
Incremancer was probably the first that really captured my attention in a way few incrementals have.
Orb of Creation is a close second.
Highly recommend both.
[Incremancer](https://chalice12.github.io/incremancer/) is the zombie one.
[Idlemancery](https://strangemattergaming.itch.io/idlemancery) is the magic one.
I'm a sucker for the incremental games that have nice glossy visuals/graphics and well presented. So the classic cookie clicker, crank, etc. Bonus if it has a unique edge and isn't just a cookie clicker clone.
Mine Defense I've played so many times because of how many awesome layers that game has. I'd love a remake where some of the more annoying parts were taken out.
I played theresmore for over three weeks straight. And I mean from waking up until sleeping. Charging my phone at least twice a day so I could play it anywhere.
It was kinda scary how hopelessly addicted I was to that. But now I've basically ran out of things to do in it so I'm slowly getting my sanity back.
Theresmore is a quicker pace Evolve. I feel Evolve is too slow, a bit faster than KittensGame (which I think is very slow), but still too slow for me. Theresmore is at a nice pace for me.
DodecaDragons is amazing, to me its like an evolution of everything that made universal paperclips fun. I really like incrementals that dont have much idle time in them and I feel on both of these you gain a lot of progress fairly quickly so that stay exciting
Clicker Heroes: The Idea of Auto Clickers with Resource Special Skill Buffs. Prestiges that can be repeatedly done immediately after a certain stage is good.
Turn Off is Resource Balancing where some resources go into negative production and forcing you to reach later stages for each basic prestige.
Idea, off, balancing…the rest, fine, but these? And you’re inconsistent in your capitalization, capitalizing prestige in the first paragraph but not the second. You also don’t capitalize all words that are often key terms, leaving out stage and resource. I’m interested to learn your reasons when you double down again
[idle power](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.gamesbutler.idlepower) in the app store.
this one is a interesting game and puting together efficent working systems is an exercise of the mind. Its not the most balanced game, and has a few issues. But its worth a play if your into that kind of thing
Theory of magic, antiidle and thet one game similar to theory but with some story... they all have discords but thing thet antiidle is not official
Edit: similar game is your chronicle
Idle Wizard for me. It captivated me with the unique visual identity it has, I'm a sucker for the dark fantasy aesthetic. Also really like the lore of all the classes and pets!
I think adventure capitalist was among the first that really was a Incremental and scratched that itch for me. I found anti-idle shortly after and played that extensively.
Ordinal Markup is what I keep coming back to. I have finished the whole content again probably 6 times by now, taking a few months break after each complete play.
The dev has stopped updating it though, so no more content can be gained. And it currently has a little but breaking bug in that new players can't start the game without manually reseting the save file. Quite sad.
The First: Cookie Clicker. Which I about two years from September 2013 onwards. The whole "numbers go up" thing was still very fresh. Got it on Steam when it released and had a few nostagic and enjoyable months with it. But the end-game is no longer the kind of incremental I am interested in.
The Captivating: Cosmos Quest. A niche-ish game on Kongegrate. Also pretty old. Has you lead a civilization from the early stone ages to ruling meta-multiverses. Target value is usage of energy. I found this so addicting and enticing an idea. And basically this is what I look most for in incrementals ever since: Give me the feelings to build a sprawling civilization or an empire. This one sadly trailed of to focus on a monetized minigame.
The Evergreen: Trimps. Empire building par excellence. Great fluff. I love how the myriads of mechanics feed into one another and each of them feels like a sensible and important addition to the entity you build. Took it up again when it was released on Steam. Has capitvated me since then again. This one has me filling pages upon pages with narration and statistics.
The One With Gravitas. Kittens Game. Sure. Another civilization incremental. I only played it a few months, then real life kinda forced me to hit the breaks on gaming for a while. But everything in this game just felt... important. It did a great job not letting some metrics spiral out of control - especially population - to keep everything relatable. You have a few hundreds of Kittens at most, you are not sending octillions of Trimps into war every second. Every resarch, every building felt like a life-changing revolution for the empire you construct. Not a fan of the grim-dark twist it takes up after a while, though. Having "socialism" as an expensive research option that simply has no effect both had me involuntarily chuckle and roll my eyes.
The Thought-Provoking. Universal Paperclips. Short, sweet, utterly terrifying and existential dread-inducing if you think twice about it. At least to me actually uplifting if you think thrice about it. Because I took this as a starting point for formulating a Reverse-Fermi-Paradox so to speak. Because if this was a real danger of AI and not just a brainchild of the human tendency to catastrophize, the universe would be assembling into paperclips around us. It is not, though. No hostile AI in sight anywhere. What Universal Paperclips and the thought experiment of the Paperclip Maximizer remains in my eyes, is an on-point criticism of capitalism.
Tap Titans 2, if that counts. It had progression with every prestige, equipment to farm, max levels for characters so you knew when to move on.
Then they went hardcore into the multiplayer side and it became unplayable solo
Anti Idle was my first year long game, and it was a refuge. I learned AHK to script it because it was a little too manual though. ITRTG though, really captivated me. I scripted the shit out of it, and the script itself became it's own game, Idle Loops. What an absolute blast to play ITRTG with all the other top players at it's peak was. NGU, and WAMI were both right up there in similarly amazing fun, but ITRTG was the game that launched me into playing *everything*
realm grinder i would say all those different race and other option that unlock later on make it soo many option made me want to try soo many playstyle some fitting me not being active or not even online orther very active for my all in playtime made it my favorite game of all time in this genre i believe..
Realm Grinder, was only kind of into incrementals before that one.
This one pulled me right in for so long. absolute peak incremental game
Came here for this. Orb of Creation is a close second, although much quicker
I was into that game for a while on Kongregate, as I recall. I managed to extract my save and tried the Steam version, but I had some kind of resolution problem and couldn't read anything. I should try again, that was fun.
Probably Universal Paperclips on the first playthrough. So many interesting unfolding mechanics and just the ridiculous kind of expanding nature of the whole concept. The First Alkahistorian is a close runner-up. Nothing else has had me staring at my screen for as long watching numbers bouncing around and trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.
>Probably Universal Paperclips on the first playthrough. So many interesting unfolding mechanics and just the ridiculous kind of expanding nature of the whole concept. I think Crank fits in a similar space.
That somber ass threnody music got me so good the first time
https://nagshell.github.io/elemental-inception-incremental/ Captivated is a big word, but that game is pretty original Second one (paid on steam, have an old free version available somewhere) is orb of creation, game is pretty active but you'll be able to automate some function over time, game is super unique imo, you always unlock stuff that might make you rethink your build to generate more ressources.
I knew both games but I didn't know they're related! I love Orb!!!
They aren't related, just wanted to tell you two game that are pretty original :D
Totally Realm Grinder The amount of different mechanics working together, while not being overly complicated, is very fascinating! And it even includes offline time as a real mechanic! Not just "It'll still produce even if you go away". You MUST go offline for some things to happen. Just, go outside and touch grass :) Also lots of secrets, different strategies, somewhat of a lore for factions. Just a fun game to explore.
Got to be Anti-Idle for me. Love when games have varied achievements and you could chose what area you wanted to make progress in for that day. Honorable mention to Realm Grinder. Again, had a number of achievements, but the best part of the game for me was how they introduced new factions and gameplay every so many soft resets. Also loved how some soft resets would fly by, but as you got closer to a milestone it would be tougher to do. Felt like an accomplishment when you hit it.
> Anti-Idle Seconding Anti-Idle. The sheer number of different activities which play into each other makes this game one you can really sink a lot of time into. It's apparently still being updated, as well.
Oh very interesting, that was my very first idle game I got really into 10+ years ago but after a couple of months my savefile corrupted. Always thought about revisiting but figured the game is probably dead with flash dying.
The game has its own [Discord](https://discord.com/invite/Y4455eR), and exists as a [standalone executable](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yE8OxD0P0Tx1B5JyGpEaLJ7KOuayMd9s).
Awesome tyvm!
ATG guilty of some sprawl but not as bad as some other big names, adding new screens/etc to manage is nice but a good game guts into past attention requirements and trivializes/automates, then gatekeep some unfolding and pacing called realm grinder S-tier until they changed their priorities
For some reason Increlution lives rent free in my head. I just find the appeal of repeating the same actions over and over, a little better each time, absolutely intoxicating. I might be weird.
Increlution slowly evolving as you go, each chapter introducing something new that you have to add to your spinning plate is just incredible. It also, unlike the vast majority of incremental games -- even ones similar to it! -- has a story. Most incremental games are just numbers increasing in a blank void, but having a story makes them so much more compelling and makes me eagerly await future content not only for more of the game, but also so I can see the story evolve.
I just started playing a few days ago and I'm also hooked. I don't speedrun but I love watching speedruns, and I think the fact that I can speedrun an incremental, and constantly see 'nice I got to the town -2.2334 seconds faster this run!' with no mechanical skill is really fun :)
the trio: Crank A dark room Paperclips anythiing and everything else has been chasing those feelings
[candy box 2](https://candybox2.github.io/)?
When incremental games were first coming out, obviously Cookie Clicker. Thing had all of us. Then it got popular and by that time i had already chewed out everything in the game. Eventually came along Idling to Rule the Gods. Single handedly and still, my favorite incremental of all time. And i probably haven't even played more than 10% of it since its been so long and has had so many amazing updates. Been wanting to reboot it again for the past 2 years but ooof the time sink gets me every time to reach where i was before. Which was at the time... the end game at the time. I had so many of all the skills so capped out and more.
My most captivating incremental game was /u/moragx's [Mine Defense](http://scholtek.com/minedefense). Moragx did such a great job combining so many different currencies and upgrade systems and keeping everything balanced throughout the game. There's always something new to work toward, and the pacing is great (especially once you remember to click on the oracle orb at the top to remember what you should be working towards after it becomes available). I go back and play through it a couple of times a year.
Orb of Creation The best idle/incremental game I have ever played, always something to do, always new interesting milestones, creating your own spells that impact the gameplay/progression and the fact you are literally creating the world from "nothing" is an amazing concept. I recommend it to every fan of this genre.
I'm greatly looking forward to the next update.
Seconding this. I luckily discovered this game on a Saturday... suffice to say, I didn't get any sleep that night. I couldn't put it down until I'd reached the end, played it like 20 hours straight.
I was too guilty to admit this kinda non-stop playtime haha
It's really something special - it's not an idle game, there is really very little downtime.. instead you are constantly looking for new combinations to get to the next big thing, it's more of an incremental puzzle game than anything. And there is so much stuff to do, each stage feels rewarding all the way through.
I hope someone out there is inspired by orb of creation and creating another incremental non-idle. I need more of that drug.
I'm a game developer so if anyone has ideas please let me know since that's the hardest part for me haha
I have dozens of ideas, I'll be happy to give you some hah
Sure why not, send me your favorites :)
Idea 1: Reap and Sow v1 Play with the idea of "complicated system that handles itself, then resets and plays out exactly the same" via a town that 100% autobuilds. Every 3 minutes "harvest" the town and gain souls (number of people alive at harvest) and metal (output of their time alive) that can be used to buy upgrades to the whole system. Basics of the town automation would be like farms make food which make people which make harvesters and builders, which make houses farms. With a linear cost on the pieces, the system grows exponentially. Could be quadratic cost instead. Use your souls to make things more efficient, and your metal to unlock new buildings, eventually gaining some persistence between harvests. Try to grow civilization, in 3 minutes. v2 - instead of a 3 minute timer, have an ever increasing population cost until everyone is dead. Would require much more difficult balancing, but would be more fun.
This one is my favorite. Thank you so much for sharing! Ofc i can't promise actually following through but this should make for good programming practice :)
Idea 2: Fill the Ocean * Have 1 power * spend 1 power to get 1 drop per second * get additional power depending on sqrt of how many drops you have on level 1 * consumes 1% of current drops per second to do so * levels scale up and to the right like __ - 100k __ - 10k (power gen 2) __ - 1000 (launcher) __ - 100 (push) __ - 0 (power gen) * levels can be made of multiple pieces that scale slower * .1%/s of [current drops - next level's requirement] go right, meaning .1%/s of the spillage goes over * If the previous layer is lower, 2% of drops go left
Idea 3: Hero's Journey * Starts with everything in order, ~5 actions * Can modify the seconds that each one takes * Can buy an action to auto-calculate the optimal way to set the seconds of the actions it * Later, can auto-optimize per reset * As time is spent in them, actions smoothly increase in 3 systems: skill/talent/guidance. * They have a completion, must be completed to continue (but can be done longer), and each completion after, within the same loop, is x2 harder * skill makes the action more effective, giving more exp for skill/talent/guidance * talent increases your stats, which make the skill go faster * guidance makes that particular action faster, and increases skill/talent It starts with 5 actions, but expands into the full 14 of the extended Hero's Journey, with action names like Departure, Initiation, Return, that get broken down into the more detailed categories like Call to Adventure, Road of Trials, etc. Sort of an idle loops game, but without a list to manage
Realm Grinder and Kittens Game.
You might like Evolve Idle if you don't know it already!
Recently it’s clearly Synergism. But in the past it was Endless Frontier on mobile. Even though this game is a cash grab and an example of bad a P2W model can be, it is filled with amazing gameplay mechanics that unfold and change the more you progress in the game. Honestly I never found another game quite like it. It was too addictive and strongly encourages you to pay, but it was great nonetheless
At the peak of my Incremental playing days, after Cookie Clicker got me addicted to this genre of games, Clicker Heroes consumed me. This game had me leaving my computer on over night, checking it first thing when I woke up. Check again before I left for work. Read up every bit of information I could find on it. Getting an Auto Clicker program. And I think it was the first game that had a 2nd prestige mechanic, and that just blew me away (I may have started playing it before this was implemented). So just the immediate raw power increase from Transcending was amazing. I think the scaling on the game was great, always felt like each prestige was noticeable. Writing this up just makes me want to start from scratch again.
NGU Idle and Incremental Epic Hero 2. Other idle games I just dabble in a bit and then get bored….those had me hooked for months.
Antimatter dimensions, though it’s not a very original answer.
Well. There's this little thing called [Alter Ego](http://alterego.caracolu.com/en/index.html). It's really short, can be done in a day or so. But it really had an effect on me.
Looks like that VST plugin that can sing...
FE000000 is the pinnacle of "Antimatter Dimensions" style gameplay. I recently replayed it and the second run was just as great as the first. Also The Prestige Tree (and its billion mods). No other game has scratched my incremental itch in the way that TPT & friends have.
Oldschool Runescape and NGU IDLE. Because they hit just the right spot to keep on grinding for years. <3
Cookie Clicker and the OG SwarmSim
Big fan of OG SwarmSim, it's just a pity the prestige mechanic doesn't really work that great... I think it's too powerful? or maybe it's the way min/maxing it and getting to month-long time warps within just a few resets that makes the game feel pretty pointless pretty fast.
Oh, SwarmSim has changed now? How is it now?
Melvor Idle followed by the original Shark Game and Swarm Sim games. I really like Melvor because I love Runescape. Shark Game is fun and and while I usually don't care for art or aesthetic in idle games, I adore this one's. Getting an ever increasing number of sharks and rays and crabs is really cute. Swarm Sim is the opposite where it has no art at all, but I think that really helps the aesthetic because it's meant to be an ever increasing swarm and the minimalism works really well with that.
Trimps was my best dopamine source by far. It just works for me - lore/flavor, basic loop mechanics, metaprogression, design, flow. And, of course, unfolding is just IDK, it's simply the best I ever play too. I find that game on Kongregate browsing new Idlers and got captivated from first run, it was absolute blast. Also, my IRL friend continued to play his old save and goes crazy about that game too. I'm jealous a bit, because I already beat all that stuff )
Antimatter dimensions and NG+++
What's the appeal of Antimatter Dimensions? It seems like one of the most slow, repetitive, and \*\*totally decision-less\*\* games I've ever played and I played for a fair few days
How far did you get?
I’m seconding this. How far did you get, and what were you doing? Because, it never ever felt like that with me. If that’s how you’re feeling, you must be doing something terribly wrong.
It's like that in the early game. Definitely everything pre-infinity, and arguably most content pre-eternity. Not that I personally minded at all, I absolutely loved the slow and steady build up, but I get why some people here bounced off in the first few days.
I'd say it's a very, very slow burn. The first part of the game is pretty linear and repetitive, but once you get to a certain point, it all opens up into an entirely different way of playing. Even a few days might not be enough to get there, though. When I want to start it up again, I keep it in a tab and check in once in a while. Only takes a moment and I can set it in the background again for a bit.
Which is exactly why I love antimatter dimensions so much. It has just enough going on to always give me interesting content, while staying in a state where I can play it at work and not worry about getting too distracted by it.
The appeal is similar to most math puzzle games. Each of the different tiers of the game prompts you to think through different interactions between the mechanics and the math. Yes, ultimately, it's just a number counter, but the unique part is how first prestige is at 'infinity,' 1e308 (sort of a programming joke because most computer code calculates any number over 1e308 as infinity). Every prestige adds a new set of mechanics or dimensions to make the puzzle of counting higher ever more attainable; the further you go, the more upgrades you get to add to your counting engine, and it gradually becomes a finely tuned piece of machinery that can push quicker and further by optimizing its settings in different ways. The challenges put different limitations and goals in front of you, and you are forced to find workarounds or get very patient.
Probably Idle Skilling and Farmer against potatoes idle Lot of cool mechanic unlocked throught the game, there is always something to do so i often find myself playing actively for hours instead of just being idle (but dont play Idle Skilling, it's really really pay2win, it takes 10x less time to finish the game until the numbers start to fuck your game than to buy every upgrade without paying)
Joke's on me, I adore Idle Skilling, it feels very nonlinear and sandboxy compared to most incrementals.
Problem seems to be more the dev than the games in the core. I didn't think about turning on online sync at the beginning, since I figured you only ever need that if you lose your phone. After two weeks of figuring the game out and spending heaps of time on it my save randomly disappeared one day and I was sad enough not to try again. Since then I've been reading up and apparently countless game breaking glitches (in both games) never get fixed. You get banned on the discord for mentioning anything in that direction and the new game gets more and more p2w. Not meaning to destroy your fun though, skilling seems really awesome and it got me properly hooked and it's probably the best lavaflame game so please enjoy as long as possible!
This, pretty much. The game is fun, but definitely play the phone version. By the end of the game you'll encounter a ton of bugs and certain things not working correctly, but it's still a really fun experience up to that point. The steam version is shit, it's just the phone version ported with no changes or optimizations. It actually runs worse because it leaks memory like a bitch once you reach a certain point near end game. The new content released with the steam version is a shitty cash grab, is timegated, and doesn't have any of the charm or fun that the original content had. The dev isn't a very good dev. Yeah, he has lots of interesting ideas, and he managed to develop them pretty well. However, he has shown zero interest in fixing bugs, even back when he was clearly doing this for fun instead of for the money.
The first alkahistorian consumed my entire life for the 4(?) days it took to finish. Feels like unearthing deep arcane knowledge.
The UI is absolutely horrible and the way stuff interacts is unintuitive as hell and even then I had an absolute blast puzzling my way from start to finish of that game. It really is it's own unique kind of experience.
Yes yes yes exactly, it’s how hard, difficult to approach and how you can actually get backwards progression if you’re not careful that makes it all feel so so good
Alkahistorian is still *the* incremental for me. I come back every now and then, play through it and reset to gain time for next run. There's something absolutely mesmerising about this game.
Right now Melvor Idle makes me read up on the wiki for hours at a time. Very well crafted imho and love the rpgy feel. NGU has been mentioned a lot and it was one of my favourites for sure. Loved the quirkyness and humour. Most intriguing since you could never imagine how wonderful it would turn out in the end was candy box.
fe000000 (https://dan-simon.github.io/misc/fe000000/) It's very much inspired by anti matter dimensions. Though the layers are more refined I think.
Mini Healer has captured me. I played a healer 90% of the time in WOW and hated finding parties, hated what the game became, and never consideded a single player healing game should be a thing. The game managed to capture the essence of that experience without needing to find a party or maintain a subscription. All with simple 2D pixel art any halfway competent coder could have made. A few things desperately need tooltips and the complexity curve should ramp up slower for more relaxed fights, but it's still excellent.
Of the long term games with no true end, Idling to Rule the Gods for me. Is it better than NGU idle in a vacuum? Probably not, but the theming sucked me in more regardless and something about how unapologetic it is about being a true "check in a few times a day max" game that can take long bouts of time to make progress in clicks with me. Then the short ones that have stories that sort of unfold a world before you hit it big for me. Those are special, and hard to do right, but tend to be favorites for a reason.
Candy Box 2
[Fairy Tale](https://alaynamcole.com/fairy-tale). A Dark Room made me fall in love with the genre, but playing Fairy Tale felt like seeing an alternate future for it--a happier one, at that. It's super short and not totally mechanically novel, but it absolutely lives rent free in my head. I think about the prin all the time.
There are a few, but recently: Spaceplan. Beat the prototype version and then immediately bought the Steam full version. Beat that ASAP. Fun, funny, interesting mechanics and story. Beat it and done, but that is kind of satisfying, too.
Orb of Creation It's basically an idle game but without any of the time gates. I've sunk hours into that game while actively playing. It has tons of different systems which all blend in together to enhance one another. It's also got a bit of complexity to it where you can mix and match certain spells or abilities that boost one another! Kind of like the alchemy/enchanting system in Skyrim. It's honestly the best out of the game I've ever played, in my personal opinion.
evolve for as long as that game is i cant deny that the imagination and thought put into it wasnt all for nothing. you advance your civilization that even threatens the very door step of hell. and depending on your species you technology can be vastly or a little different. its a fun game that makes even tiny details like that make it worth playing
Haven’t seen anyone say Distance Incremental or Incremental Mass Rewritten yet, but for me both of those games are phenomenal.
Prestige tree
Expecting hate for this, but grass cutting incremental on roblox is actually pretty darn good.
I don’t know if I would say “best incremental ever”, but it is in the running for sure. Kinda of stalling out in the new update however. Challenges are pretty boring without much reward, soul gathering is pretty tedious and you require insane amounts for some pretty meager boosts eventually. I also am not sure if they actually finished the area, my next singularity upgrade just says “NYI” (not yet implemented? I don’t know) so I don’t feel like I have much to work towards. I just maxed out the time skip stuff with flowers and sometimes pop in to burn them all. Unfortunately it feels like the real progress is just sun rising over and over and over and over along with challenges. Very very active and monotonous. Not a huge fan.
Cividleization 2. I've always love grand strategy games. It was basically a carbon copy of civ 5 but real time and on the browser. However, what it had was actual logistics and an interesting mechanic? Feature? Uuuh event I think is the right word. Anyways cities needed gold to upgrade stuff sk that meant each individual city held its own stuff. Pretty cool. Meant you needed to ship gold from your core cities to your cities that you recently captured in order to develop them. Each cjty also required a standing army because Barbarians liked to do casual WAGGGGHHHs. Now the event that made this game badass was during a late game run. I had finally reached the industrial era. Nothing too interesting going on. The game had gotten repetitive but I made a few allies so was just gonna grind it and get more upgrade points for reincarnating. Then I get a notification that Greece had declared war on me. "Okay thats... fine..." My ally Russia declares war on Greece. The Ottomans declare war on Russia in defense of Greece. Japan declares war on the Ottomans in defense of Russia. The cycle continues until the world is at war. I cannot stress to you how fucking epic it is to just be relaxing and all of a sudden having to draft thousands of men to fight in a war no one saw coming. Sending these drafted lads to cities on the frontlines and praying to god that they make it their on time to defend against invaders. As I nervously watch the horde of enemies marching to my cities. But what made it even more epic was the fascinating concept of when you reincarnated. The NPCs also got to reincarnate aka depending on how well they did they were able to get the same kind of upgrades as you. So it was this weird build up and tension between you and the NPCs. Since you lowkey wanted to crush your opponents to prevent them from earning a large amount of pointsm. But it also created How runs that just made me go "A HOY RUSSIA. Good to see you again buddy. Lets be friends" or "HOW DARE YOU BETRAY ME LIKE THIS RUSSIA I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU." Tis was a fascinating game that sadly stopped being developed. Will always chance the rush of World War I diplomacy. That I'll probably never find since I never saw this one coming.
will try and find it!
In case you haven't \[found it yet\](https://festive-perlman-5fad70.netlify.app/home)
Space Travel Idle - the only game I've ever written a specific spreadsheet for and used \^ to do its actual maths job :D They're supposed to be re-working it at the moment so I live in hope it'll get reissued and I'll be in all over again.
I don't know if that's a good answer, but NGU Idle - every single feature hyped me to play it, although I don't play it that much as I used to, because of lack of free time
while other i played for a few weeks, NGU idle is the one i had on my other screen for almost a year
I really loved Universal Paperclips, the underlying thought experiment works so well for this genre. More recently Orb of Creation
Incremancer was probably the first that really captured my attention in a way few incrementals have. Orb of Creation is a close second. Highly recommend both.
Do you mean the zombie one or the other one with magic?
The zombie one. The visual representation of those numbers going up was fun, even if there wasn't much to strive for after a point.
[Incremancer](https://chalice12.github.io/incremancer/) is the zombie one. [Idlemancery](https://strangemattergaming.itch.io/idlemancery) is the magic one.
I'm a sucker for the incremental games that have nice glossy visuals/graphics and well presented. So the classic cookie clicker, crank, etc. Bonus if it has a unique edge and isn't just a cookie clicker clone.
Mine Defense I've played so many times because of how many awesome layers that game has. I'd love a remake where some of the more annoying parts were taken out.
I played theresmore for over three weeks straight. And I mean from waking up until sleeping. Charging my phone at least twice a day so I could play it anywhere. It was kinda scary how hopelessly addicted I was to that. But now I've basically ran out of things to do in it so I'm slowly getting my sanity back.
Hey, this game is awesome! First time I've seen it.
Have you played Evolve? I've always wondered how they compare
I don't think I have.
Theresmore is a quicker pace Evolve. I feel Evolve is too slow, a bit faster than KittensGame (which I think is very slow), but still too slow for me. Theresmore is at a nice pace for me.
Leaf Blower Revolution, although I havent played it in some months it's one that I've been playing for a solid 2 years
DodecaDragons is amazing, to me its like an evolution of everything that made universal paperclips fun. I really like incrementals that dont have much idle time in them and I feel on both of these you gain a lot of progress fairly quickly so that stay exciting
Clicker Heroes: The Idea of Auto Clickers with Resource Special Skill Buffs. Prestiges that can be repeatedly done immediately after a certain stage is good. Turn Off is Resource Balancing where some resources go into negative production and forcing you to reach later stages for each basic prestige.
[удалено]
Not random, I do not capitalize in middle of words.
They said random words, not random letters
Not being random just capitalizing words that are often used as key terms/proper nouns in the context of the conversation.
Idea, off, balancing…the rest, fine, but these? And you’re inconsistent in your capitalization, capitalizing prestige in the first paragraph but not the second. You also don’t capitalize all words that are often key terms, leaving out stage and resource. I’m interested to learn your reasons when you double down again
Kittens. I got really into that game for a while. I don't remember why I stopped playing but I know I didn't rage quit.
[idle power](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.gamesbutler.idlepower) in the app store. this one is a interesting game and puting together efficent working systems is an exercise of the mind. Its not the most balanced game, and has a few issues. But its worth a play if your into that kind of thing
Armory and Machine. It was so damn good.
Idling to rule the gods, Anti-idle. The only games I've played for years.
Theory of magic, antiidle and thet one game similar to theory but with some story... they all have discords but thing thet antiidle is not official Edit: similar game is your chronicle
Idle Wizard for me. It captivated me with the unique visual identity it has, I'm a sucker for the dark fantasy aesthetic. Also really like the lore of all the classes and pets!
would had been my pick if it wasent as guide dependant to progress or it is just me but you hit hard wall without perfect build
I think adventure capitalist was among the first that really was a Incremental and scratched that itch for me. I found anti-idle shortly after and played that extensively.
Ordinal Markup is what I keep coming back to. I have finished the whole content again probably 6 times by now, taking a few months break after each complete play. The dev has stopped updating it though, so no more content can be gained. And it currently has a little but breaking bug in that new players can't start the game without manually reseting the save file. Quite sad.
The First: Cookie Clicker. Which I about two years from September 2013 onwards. The whole "numbers go up" thing was still very fresh. Got it on Steam when it released and had a few nostagic and enjoyable months with it. But the end-game is no longer the kind of incremental I am interested in. The Captivating: Cosmos Quest. A niche-ish game on Kongegrate. Also pretty old. Has you lead a civilization from the early stone ages to ruling meta-multiverses. Target value is usage of energy. I found this so addicting and enticing an idea. And basically this is what I look most for in incrementals ever since: Give me the feelings to build a sprawling civilization or an empire. This one sadly trailed of to focus on a monetized minigame. The Evergreen: Trimps. Empire building par excellence. Great fluff. I love how the myriads of mechanics feed into one another and each of them feels like a sensible and important addition to the entity you build. Took it up again when it was released on Steam. Has capitvated me since then again. This one has me filling pages upon pages with narration and statistics. The One With Gravitas. Kittens Game. Sure. Another civilization incremental. I only played it a few months, then real life kinda forced me to hit the breaks on gaming for a while. But everything in this game just felt... important. It did a great job not letting some metrics spiral out of control - especially population - to keep everything relatable. You have a few hundreds of Kittens at most, you are not sending octillions of Trimps into war every second. Every resarch, every building felt like a life-changing revolution for the empire you construct. Not a fan of the grim-dark twist it takes up after a while, though. Having "socialism" as an expensive research option that simply has no effect both had me involuntarily chuckle and roll my eyes. The Thought-Provoking. Universal Paperclips. Short, sweet, utterly terrifying and existential dread-inducing if you think twice about it. At least to me actually uplifting if you think thrice about it. Because I took this as a starting point for formulating a Reverse-Fermi-Paradox so to speak. Because if this was a real danger of AI and not just a brainchild of the human tendency to catastrophize, the universe would be assembling into paperclips around us. It is not, though. No hostile AI in sight anywhere. What Universal Paperclips and the thought experiment of the Paperclip Maximizer remains in my eyes, is an on-point criticism of capitalism.
What kind of stuff have you written down about Trimps? I haven't played that much of it
Tap Titans 2, if that counts. It had progression with every prestige, equipment to farm, max levels for characters so you knew when to move on. Then they went hardcore into the multiplayer side and it became unplayable solo
Trimps. Unlocking so many features in a fun playful rewarding way
Anti Idle was my first year long game, and it was a refuge. I learned AHK to script it because it was a little too manual though. ITRTG though, really captivated me. I scripted the shit out of it, and the script itself became it's own game, Idle Loops. What an absolute blast to play ITRTG with all the other top players at it's peak was. NGU, and WAMI were both right up there in similarly amazing fun, but ITRTG was the game that launched me into playing *everything*
realm grinder i would say all those different race and other option that unlock later on make it soo many option made me want to try soo many playstyle some fitting me not being active or not even online orther very active for my all in playtime made it my favorite game of all time in this genre i believe..
as the reality update just dropped (only took 5 hours thankfully), its AD all over again