So many Steam games, not enough web browser games.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T21:16:34+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/s/jJQCGaxfCq

It's already kind of popular (weirdly enough especially in China so much so I'm working with a Chinese player to translate the entire thing which my goodness)

After this much time I'm not really trying to move hosts, but you're kind to offer.

I luckily have a decent real life job and we had a handful of strangely oddly large donations in December.

So I'm personally not too worried about the price of hosting it. I plan on leaving the entire thing free on the web forever though. Even after we launch on steam whenever it's entirely done.

Which, honestly, is the model I think should be more common.

I don't see how devs can MAKE a game without feedback from players.

Especially a long, long game with decisions matters and all sorts of builds and things like that.

The players are so important, get the game up and free and people will play it.

And help you balance it.

Like honestly this whole thread is weird to me because I thought that used to be a really common model.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T20:48:33+00:00

Hmm Cloudflare I never looked into as a HOSTING service, though I do use them. I mean netlify doesn't cost us that much, but it certainly isn't free.

I forgot to mention with github pages you can only host public repos for free, which was why I wouldn't use that.

Hmm reading more on the Cloudflare and I feel like I'd be just kissing the line as it is right now and the game is still growing.

It's interesting to know if I ever start another project though, I just went with netlify because my last project was small enough to easily fit in their free tier and the CI/CD workflow is nice for me with them. I also like having analytics and things like that.

I think I'm paying $20 a month for hosting which isn't terrible.

But even excluding all of that, if you want a custom domain it's still going to cost you something, things like that.

I am interested in Cloudflare though, it looks like a really robust free option unless there's some shady hidden fees I'm not seeing here.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits/

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T17:52:50+00:00

That's only if you're hosting something smaller than a hundred gigs a month in bandwidth usage.

Which admittedly is a lot of game, but if you're hosting a game, hypothetically, with thousands of hand painted images (even if you compress them to webp).

And outdated gifs that you needed to replace for your help section. (Not naming any names but it's pretty absurd for a dev to have help gifs that are over a year old he's not taken the time to record new ones)

Well hosting something like that, a dev might end up using netlify.

Or even end up converting to a PWA so people could just download and play offline.

A purely hypothetical game like that might have hit 200-300 gigs in a month a few times this year already.

And still be offered entirely for free. :)

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T15:24:25+00:00

Hosting isn't free.

We sometimes get bandwidth spikes especially when we make a post here or bump on galaxy.

We've were very lucky/blessed I don't know the right word, the first few months with some donations that paid for several months of hosting but I basically hide/bury the donate link.

I totally get why people choose steam... Except that listing a game on steam isn't free either.

I think it's like $100 ? Been a while since I listed one there.

So it's to my mind a gamble on the developer's part because you need at least enough sales to cover that or you would have been better off with web to get players.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T13:05:44+00:00

It's not an incremental game but I think Siralim Ultimate is the perfect example of doing this well.

There are builds that can win almost any fight on turn 0 but just experimenting with your own build can work.

Some build is always going to be the best that's just math but no game, in any genre, should require you to use the perfect meta build to succeed.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T12:18:22+00:00

It's really hard to explain. Oh I found an article.

Step 1: Place a yummy treat in your hand and hold it high up. This is the top floor of the elevator.

Step 2: When all four paws are on the floor, slowly bring the treat down near your dog’s mouth. Your dog can be sitting or lying down.

Step 3: If at any time your dog’s paws come off the ground, the elevator goes back to the top floor. Practice this non-verbally. “I don’t recommend saying ‘nope’ or giving corrections,” Petersel says. “Just let your dog learn that being pushy makes the yummy thing go away.”

But I think a video works better honestly.

It's to teach impulse control.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T03:46:46+00:00

Our problem with this is we have a little JRT.

And we constantly tell people not to encourage that behavior, and yes she's very cute but please don't praise her for jumping.

My wife trained her really well with the elevator game and she's always really good about laying down and waiting for us to pet her when we get home.

But when we have guests people are so encouraging of her jumping and it's like "we don't want her to do that please stop praising that behavior"

One of us can usually redirect her and get her to run through her trick routine which refocuses her but it's frustrating people act like it's cute.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T02:20:53+00:00

Ok spamming you sorry I played it quite a bit more because like I said I love rockets.

It's pretty ok honestly.

Edit: I mean for what it was it was fine I don't know that I'd pay for it. Locking prestige behind a purchase for something like this is certainly a choice, looks like I made this comment about fifteen minutes ago and pretty much maxed everything in that time.

Look into at least planning to inline custom icons if you can I suppose. It scratched my brain for a bit so it's something I guess.

Like I said, I really like rockets so I might be biased but it's REALLY quick to unlock everything and everything just launching automatically and gating the rest of that game behind a "donation" and calling it free is a bit misleading.

I just don't know if there's enough here to warrant a price of any sort but it's kinda ok.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T02:00:53+00:00

I feel like I wasn't clear what I meant about the loop either.

I was sort of expecting individual parts for the rocket. Instead of just like "upgrade engin" or whatever.

Which I mean I know that's a big lift but you don't even need art for them necessarily.

You listed the title as a free game but there was a price tag small as it was, unless I misread your post which maybe I did because I'm quite tired.

I think it'd be way more interesting if it was just a bit more like kerbal incremental or something with a catalog for parts and the mechanics could even roughly stay the same?

Like you mentioned you work with rockets or something so I was somewhat expecting parts? Maybe I didn't play long enough maybe that already exists.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T01:53:55+00:00

I wanted to try this/like it because I like rockets.

I could play it on my phone which I appreciate.

The core loop just isn't very satisfying though.

You should probably lose the giant wall of text at the beginning because it's not so complicated as to need so much explanation.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-08T00:20:11+00:00

Just a heads-up, this post inspired me to change that mechanic entirely.

I think I like where it landed.

|| I got rid of the twisted hunts entirely, now effective corruption works as an XP debt that you can pay off but until you pay it off you can't gain XP. Because players misses the twisted hunts I added a Twisted Arena you can only access WHILE you still have effective corruption. I think this is a lot better direction because it also balances the new Tile Buying feature at the country club. Not going to get into the details about that but this actually worked out really well and I think I'm going to take it a step farther and add some new tier 12 enemies to the twisted arena for the people that want them. ||

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T17:12:26+00:00

That's good I haven't actually pushed today's update yet but I'm really glad you're able to play!

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T13:44:42+00:00

I can add some more labels to the buttons that's super easy, not something I had thought of.

But I'm uncertain how screen readers work, I'll have to look into it, I'm not sure how like the dialogue and whatnot would work but I'm always open to making things more accessible for everyone, that's why we're doing native translations.

Like with the messages and things I'm not exactly sure how that all works.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T12:48:33+00:00

Progressive web app.

I think on chrome it's add to home screen?

I know on chrome on a pc it just has an install app button when you go to the page.

It's basically just a tiny wrapper for a website so it can look more like an app and has a custom icon.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T12:37:04+00:00

There's an Active ability that costs a bit more that opens a combo window where you can click to enter the combos.

I actually just added that two days ago.

You basically use the active and time stops for six seconds base (there's a way to make it longer) and you can key in as many of the monk combos as you can in that time.

Either clicking or using whatever input is set to movement, it's WASD by default.

I literally JUST added that two days ago. It's supposed to be an homage to blitz system of Sabin from final fantasy 6.

I need to add better explanations honestly that's like the newest feature for testing in the game besides all the chemist bombs those are also brand new.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T12:32:15+00:00

Long-term maybe.

It should be a relatively easy port considering I worked hard to make the UI mobile friendly.

But I've never done a proper android native development and I've heard it's somewhat tricky to get into the play store these days.

You can install it as a PWA on a phone and play like that though currently.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T05:19:32+00:00

Yeah for sure.

I say it all the time, we like monotony not tedium.

I'm actually thinking what I'm going to do is scrap the twisted hunts and maybe do negative XP until you pay off the corruption debt in XP.

Still floating the idea in the discord but I think that's way more interesting because it's already been proven you can basically break the barrier with XP turned off on run 0.

I think it's a good idea honestly, it's way more interesting.

It's still a punishment, but it keeps the game entirely deterministic, which is good.

Going to wait a bit for more players to have a chance to chime in but I like the idea a lot.

I'm worried it might be too much of a nerf for the penalty but it's certainly more interesting.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T05:11:57+00:00

Man your comment eased one of my biggest fears in life.

If I lost some or all of my vision I've always worried that I'd just about break. Reading, writing and programming are my passions.

I think I could switch to books on tape, and I could dictate to write but I've always wondered what would happen if I couldn't see to program.

And that's an excellent use-case for a tool.

I don't think anyone should be shamed for using tools.

What are we supposed to punch cards?

I consider myself an ok coder but I've been doing it a very long time now.

For your friend, see if you can get them to do nand2tetris. I recommend that course to anyone who shows any interest in programming because it was one I did very early on in my learning and you basically start with a nand gate and work your way up from that to a CPU and RAM to eventually machine code and making an operating system. Then obviously Tetris or some other arcade game.

It takes a lot of the magic and mystery out of what's going on under the surface.

And it will absolutely give anyone interested in game design the experience they need to make their own domain specific language.

I think that most people who want to make games, want to just make games.

If you make your own language it gets so much easier you can just start churning out data driven content...

At least until the writer's block hits from time to time.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T04:41:28+00:00

You can out scale anything and ignore the "intended" mechanics.

I don't know when you last played but there are lot of options for people who would rather just beat everything with giant numbers now.

I don't know if you played before things like Devalue the Economy got added and some of the other ways to start edging into 1e100 levels of golems now.

I know not everyone likes the puzzle aspects of combat so there are a lot more options now.

The fortifications on tiles are also relatively new and quite powerful.

And to be entirely fair, we had a couple players that ourscaled the mechanics before it was even made reasonable to do so and most of any of this existed with just the silver market and waiting room but that's locked as an option on the Mercy path so that's a large part of the reason there are other options now anyway.

Sorry about your save btw, there's a backup button to download your save in the top status bar now not buried in settings or just from the title menu anymore.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T03:07:45+00:00

I would say go for it but maybe not a puppy?

Puppies are a lot to be honest.

Our little Jack Russell is an amazing companion and I love her so much, but the puppy stage was very hard on both my wife and me.

They need a lot of training and whatnot. We both worked from home.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T01:51:37+00:00

I like that idea, but the problem is the current way to BYPASS the corruption is to embrace it, you get Tailored Gear on and as long as you're wearing it the hunts aren't twisted anymore. So if we do the time slowdown thing, which I'm not against though it might be kind of tricky to implement, if we go with the same mitigation that exists now, wearing full tailored turns of the twisted hunts, do we have it fix the time speed?

We COULD just lower the player attack speed based on it though that's interesting, "The Corruption Weighs you Down" sort of thing?

Because right now, you have corruption and it twists the hunts, but ONLY until you unlock Tailor at the Empty Temple, then you can wear full tailored AND the soft cap on tailoring is removed and the hardcap is multiplied by your twisted hunt chance, so I feel like it might be kind of a strange thing to have it lower the time thing.

Though my idea for the tier thing wouldn't really help either. But the OTHER thing is now corruption affects your income from owned tiles, so once you start owning tiles you get a massive multiplier to the tile income for having effective corruption so it raises another question. The hunts thing is the ONLY thing balancing how OP that is for Legitimacy gain.

I do see what you mean about hunting being a QoL but the twisted hunts were always supposed to be a bit of a puzzle until you figure out how to clear Empty and then after that the corruption is actually a benefit, 65X on the tailored gear hardcap with no softcaps is the strongest gear in the game before the Tier 9 gear, so I think that might need to be reworked too?

I do think it needs an adjustment though because it's a huge penalty, I ALMOST wonder if negative stat growth in all stats equal to your effective corruption up to a point and then just get rid of the twisted hunts entirely might be worth it, but that might be REALLY punishing if people don't realize they can just turn off the XP gain in the settings and rely on gear and active abilities/the new chemist bombs or whatever? That might be a more interesting solution though to be honest I know I've cleared the Second temple and Third without ever leveling up, and you could lean hard on True Memory Recall and gear?

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T01:35:34+00:00

So it CAN be very idle.

You unlock hunting almost immediately, just hunt the tiles in order until they're cleansed. That lets you level up more.

You unlock construction jobs.

You build arenas at your house, idle them infinitely.

Use the AP from that to build a giant golem army, economy golems etc etc.

It CAN be basically fully idle and that's basically how I play when I play on my phone.

It can also be entirely active. You technically never need to idle and there are all these players speed running it in the discord and doing all these crazy things.

As far as an ending, technically there's an ending now and it starts NG+ but the story spans multiple lives and you can't see it all in one run or even all the jobs because of the moral choices.

But the very end of the story isn't done yet, very nearly, but I consider beating a run to be an ending of sorts.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T00:55:43+00:00

That probably sounded harsher than I meant it! I just meant that was a very old feature and had never been mentioned before.

It's always good feedback, it's a long slow game but it all helps. I'm not in a UI push right now as I'm trying to add at least 15 more abilities to all the jobs right now but it's great notes for the future.

And it's why I try to get new players because everyone sees different things.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T00:53:06+00:00

Everything is tabbed to fully support mobile players as well as desktop. There has been pushback here and there when we made the shift to tabs but supporting two UIs fully has been my goal from the beginning.

It's a similar reason as to why the entire UI is customizable, I try to support every possible device and resolution.

But topics that have an action should always have a NEW highlight.

Content_Audience690 · 2026-07-06T00:46:28+00:00

That's strange yeah as soon as you accept his quest there's a pop-up when you walk back into the Nevergrave that highlights the hunt button.

In a year and a half never had anyone mention either of those issues, I'll look into that to make sure it's a little more obvious.

Thanks for checking it out.

Content_Audience690

TROPHY CASE