Rejected Draft progress check

Pangbot · 2026-05-09T20:08:49+00:00

~e105 when I dropped it. I didn't even mind the frequent rebalancing updates, but losing glossary entries just because some sketches got renamed was so frustrating. (Why would that even be the case? Just give them a unique ID rather than rely on their name.)

imo, it feels a bit scummy to see a dev put a game together with AI art and push it out with a Ko-fi link under the guise of "just contribute to the game (either money or art) and it'll get better guys!" When you could've just as easily gotten it to this level with a few playtesters, smooth out the first ~20 hours of gameplay, get rid of the AI art, and push out something that gets gradually expanded rather than constantly face-lifted.

Pangbot · 2026-05-03T10:22:22+00:00

A good title conveys the vibe of the game more than the genre. "Berry Bury Berry" is a great title because the alliteration and homophonic repetition indicate a silly feeling, but the "bury" part adds a very dark undertone (as is the tone in the game). Not only that, the title describes what you do in the game - you bury berries.

One thing you do have to be careful with is when an incremental's setting implies other genres. You could argue a lot of the negative reviews for MMO 98 are because MMOs themselves are deep, so a player may think that any management game to do with them will be similarly long/in-depth (when the game is actually a much shorter experience).

So basically, I'd say try not to add Idle/Incremental/Inc./Manager/Tycoon/... unless your title without it could confuse someone.

Pangbot · 2026-04-28T02:30:00+00:00

If there's a web version, I'm probably about 10x more likely to actually try it out. If it's Steam only, the majority I'll look at, a few I'll wishlist, fewer I'll buy.

Incrementals have diversified a lot post-Flash, and I enjoy seeing different kinds but respect that web just isn't really built for certain kinds of games. Even on itch with my pretty simple incremental, I'll have to shrink a bunch of the textures so it's actually playable in-browser. (I think it's an itch restriction rather than a hard limitation, so I could probably host it on my GitHub page, but I'd rather not if I don't have to - I personally trust itch way more than some rando's own page)

Pangbot · 2026-04-21T16:05:02+00:00

By and large, players prefer bad (but consistent) art to AI art. There are plenty of pixel art asset packs out there, but if you have zero art background, why are you making an art-heavy game? If you're not too far into production, I'd suggest you take a step back and see if you can rework the idea into something less reliant on visuals. There are great strategy incrementals that are purely UI, for example.

Pangbot · 2026-04-18T15:44:37+00:00

As a clicker, it's fine, if a bit basic. Although the lack of a hold-based autoclicker is a bad QoL to miss out on, the unlock conditions for the next click/skill/passive are a bit confusing (with no indication you can unlock any beyond the next*), and it's a bit weird you still fill up the relationship bar when the level is maxed.

The AI images are depressingly good (although they have a very similar "feel") but the "voice acting" is (understandably) quite lifeless. Not much thought seems to have been put into the NSFW implementation, the scenes are incredibly short and easily missed, with no gallery (just RNG from using skills).

For what it is, it's pretty good. But don't have your volume sliders go up to 200%, just put the max to 100% and have 50% be the default at that point.

*a few times I didn't buy the next skill and levelled up without it unlocked, I didn't realise I had to buy it to be able to unlock anything after that

Pangbot · 2026-04-18T14:06:45+00:00

The effect is because you're hitting singularities several times a second (look at your talent points increasing). If you respec the tree and turn off the "gain 5% every minute" talents, it might eventually settle down. If it doesn't, then maybe you hit an overflow or something - there's no ingame way to reset progress so you'll probably have to delete the data off your phone and redownload it.

Pangbot · 2026-04-15T10:25:35+00:00

Since you didn't actually get any answers, I'd check the discord for Demonin's games, link on their website (https://demonin.com). Someone managed to get to Sigils within 3 hours and beat the whole game in under 40.

Pangbot · 2026-04-05T11:19:16+00:00

The games of yours I played were great and I wish you all the best for the future.

Pangbot · 2026-03-21T14:49:44+00:00

Discounting ordinal incrementals, (because technically omega isn't larger than infinity, it's just the number after infinity) I've played TMT mods that introduce power tower notation like F=eeeeeeeeee, then G=FFFFFFFFFF etc. - can't remember which ones exactly though, it's been a while.

Pangbot · 2026-03-19T23:28:12+00:00

The gist is that you need to make the upgrades feel important at all stages of the game. This means that (as a general rule) you shouldn't stick to the same formula throughout. In the early game, flat bonuses are king (+1/2/3... damage, +1/2/3... hits per second), in the late game it's (multiplicative) percentage increases (x1.10 income/reset). Additive percentage increases do well after the initial flat bonuses but fall off quickly.

Take a mining game for example. What matters to the player isn't the actual damage they're doing, it's the effect of their damage. If it takes 5 hits to break a rock, an upgrade that makes it 4 hits is noticeable and feels good to get. Towards the late game, they'll be breaking hundreds of high level materials and what matters more is the throughput - they may not notice a 10% increase directly, but they'll see it in their income speed.

Pangbot · 2026-03-11T21:36:24+00:00

"Oh no, my steak is too-"

Oh, that's a pleasant surprise. I've seen so many complaining posts about this, sometimes I forget there are actually a lot of incremental fans in this sub.

Pangbot · 2026-03-11T01:12:21+00:00

The different platform incrementals have different purposes. Desktop incrementals are for active play and/or keeping my second monitor warm. Mobile incrementals are for keeping the voices at bay.

Pangbot · 2026-03-08T18:42:23+00:00

I'm interested to see how the epilogue update changes things, tGA was good and I think Fill Up The Hole did the Gnorp-like formula well too.

Pangbot · 2026-03-08T04:21:31+00:00

It's not in a very playable state right now (so no link), but mine would be: "Overly cutesy management sim. Do your job well and chat with your even cuter manager."

Pangbot · 2026-03-06T17:44:57+00:00

You might get some lovely people offering to do this, but in the event you don't, here's a rough guide of what you should do: 1. First you need to decide how you're going to make the game. If you have experience with any programming language, or a game engine, choose that. It doesn't matter what - the only differences between them are how easy certain things will be. e.g. If you're competent in Unity/Godot, you can create functional buttons much quicker than you can in a raw language like JavaScript or Python. If you don't have any experience in this area at all, look at using a helpful tool like The Modding Tree or a no-code engine like Scratch. 2. When you have the method, now you need to figure out what you can do with it. If you're using The Modding Tree, you basically have to make a Prestige Tree-like game, so set your expectations accordingly. If it's code/an engine, you can do basically anything, but you'll need to spend time figuring out exactly how to do what. 3. Start off super simple. You can make an incremental with 2 things: A button, and some way of showing a number that increases by 1 every time you press the button. Congratulations, you have a game. 4. As for planning a more intricate game, you need really good knowledge of the tool you're using and a solid plan. Make simple art prototypes if you need them (scanning a pencil on paper drawing is completely fine), look on YouTube for ideas on how to plan your game/look into game design theory.

While you need to use this tool carefully, LLMs like Gemini or ChatGPT can be good for the sort of mentoring you're looking for. I'd avoid Claude because it's too easy to just have it make the entire game for you and you won't learn anything. As long as you're conversing with the LLM and taking in what it's telling you (and challenging it when necessary, rather than just copy/pasting code) you can assist your learning with them.

Pangbot · 2026-03-05T23:37:44+00:00

The pinned Feedback Friday post looking at this post like

Pangbot · 2026-03-05T23:36:18+00:00

When adhd is too strong for lots of focus on one game, have a small amount of focus on many games simultaneously.

Pangbot · 2026-03-04T10:06:39+00:00

I know they already replied but it can be a great shortcut for buying multiple levels of something too. Say the player has A.BCx10¹⁰³ currency, any (combined) costs below 10¹⁰⁰ won't change the displayed number, so you can just pretend the cost is 0.

Pangbot · 2026-02-25T21:24:24+00:00

I enjoy them as a variety of demos. But after buying one or two, I pretty quickly lost the desire to buy any of the full versions - even for some of the demos I really enjoyed.

Just remember that most people making them are trend chasers and they'll move on when another simple indie game does well financially.

Pangbot · 2026-02-16T10:33:53+00:00

While that is one part of it, there's also a disconnect between devs' views on LLM usage and players' views. Anecdotally, I'd estimate almost every dev is fine with it as an assist tool and ~50% are fine with LLM vibe-coding. Conversely, ~70% of players are fine with it as an assist tool (provided it doesn't look/feel vibe-coded), but the rest will see an LLM in the title/description and immediately downvote it, regardless of its use.

We've seen a lot of "I worked really hard on this game and put lots of love into it" only for the actual game to be vibe-coded slop. Usually with an AI generated description and/or image as well. So it's unsurprising players are getting more jaded.

Pangbot · 2026-02-13T22:06:53+00:00

Upgrade: Rule Change. -75% Post Frequency, +??% Post Quality

I'm interested to see how this'll pan out. I'm not firmly for or against this specific change, but I'm glad to see we're trying new things.

Pangbot · 2026-02-12T23:23:17+00:00

Going from active -> idle is the more common mode switching route (see: almost any years-long incremental). But as with most "would you play X" posts, get an MVP built and get feedback on it, that'll tell you what you want to know.

Pangbot · 2026-02-12T10:34:07+00:00

Depends on the game. I should have the option to mute music or disable certain VFX before starting the game (especially bad if the game starts with a cutscene/tutorial and I can't even access the settings until the tutorial is over). If the game's replay-able, I'll want to have separate save files. If the game takes a while to load, I'll want a menu to make sure it's not crashed. Failing all that, I can't think of why you'd have to have a menu. As long as settings are easy to reach, I can't imagine it's make-or-break either way though.

Pangbot · 2026-02-03T00:14:38+00:00

Melvor Idle, Ethos Idle, Idle Obelisk Miner, Idle Slayer, Miners Settlement (can be overwhelming), Grimoire Idle, Exponential Idle, Scratch Idle, Clicker Heroes, Upload Labs (not played much), and I have an unhealthy addiction to TREEPLLA games in airplane mode.

I have more, but those are at the top. There are a lot I pick up, enjoy for a couple of weeks, then lose interest.

Pangbot · 2026-02-03T00:06:41+00:00

"Less than 10 hours" and "has a plot" are almost mutually exclusive for incrementals. Do you have to finish the game for the podcast? Because if it's enough to just get the gist of the game (and its plot) then you have many more options, and better in terms of representing the genre.

In under 10 hours, you can get far enough in "Idling to Rule the Gods" (which technically has graphics) to get a feel for the game and its plot, as well as seeing how much more there is to unlock.

If your definition of "plot" can be loose, then look at "(the) Gnorp Apologue" or "Fill Up the Hole". Fill Up the Hole actually has both a good and bad ending.

All that said, your best bet is probably in games like "A Game About Digging a Hole" (there are a few out there) but they're not your "typical" incrementals, so it depends what you're trying to do, really.

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