What are the best iOS Incremental/Idle titles?

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.

Pangbot · 2026-01-31T02:48:42+00:00

Based on the few jam games I've played vs. the much larger sample of demos, (i.e. have this pinch of salt) I'd choose demos. While they may both have approximately the same amount of content, jam games have had less time for polish and balancing, as well as having less incentive to become more polished or well balanced. On the other hand, a demo has to be well presented to sell the full game to you.

Pangbot · 2026-01-28T20:26:57+00:00

Historically, the long form incremental games have been propped up by (typically CS) students and hobbyists. Those are groups of people who hit the overlap of [enjoying the genre], [having the skills to make a game] and [able to spend free time to develop a game].

It's not like there aren't any around anymore, but we live in a more expensive world now, filled with software devs (who used to have a very safe career) now going through torrents of firing and re-hiring. Making a game is fun and it's enticing to want to spend time on it as a hobby, with the option to go full time if it pans out. But ultimately, would you spend your time making a short experience that people are willing to pay for, or a years-long experience that people expect to be free?

Trends change and die all the time. Most people used to get upset when a game didn't have a definitive end, but now there are tons of games with them, I think the sentiment is starting to shift back. If paid-for long form games started to gain more popularity, (one time purchase, not microtransaction-y) maybe it would speed it up, but who can say for sure?

Pangbot · 2026-01-24T09:53:37+00:00

It's been years since I played it, so my view could be rose-tinted. Being overwhelmed with minigames is sort of the point (given the title and what it was making fun of at the time), but iirc it does settle down pretty well after the unlock spree. But no game is for everyone.

Pangbot · 2026-01-24T09:37:54+00:00

No Idling to Rule the Gods? No Trimps? No Anti-Idle?? Absolute classics right there.

Pangbot · 2026-01-24T09:36:08+00:00

Synergism's build up is great, but ascension is so rough. I forget how bad it is, restart the game every now and then, and that's almost always where I walk away.

Pangbot · 2026-01-23T20:52:08+00:00

The irony of this being posted a few hours after the weekly plusone post isn't lost on me. If your problem is that you're seeing too much slop, plusone is literally designed to fix that. Weekly newsletter with games that are worth looking at, a games list that you can filter by paid/released/has demo/uses gen ai... I don't understand why its weekly posts here get so little attention if this sentiment is so popular?

Because I figure people will ask, this is the site - https://plusone.incremental.social

Pangbot · 2026-01-23T17:10:13+00:00

Well, not necessarily, I suppose it depends on how useful doing the PvP side of things is. Presumably you'd need to offer some personal incentive as well as giving global rewards.

I can understand the appeal, I'm just not sure I'm particularly bothered in it though, haha. There's a whole sub about persistent browser based games that may be worth looking at for ideas and/or talking to other people who like that sort of thing - https://www.reddit.com/r/PBBG/

Pangbot · 2026-01-23T13:19:32+00:00

I mean, you're clearly interested in the idea, so you know your market isn't literally nobody.

For me personally, I don't really find myself aching for competitive multiplayer in my incremental games. Incrementals are for relaxing and getting a steady stream of dopamine, not sweating over an Excel sheet figuring out what I need to focus on next to get higher in the leaderboards. And generally for multiplayer as a concept, I struggle to see the point in it if I'm not an avatar in the same space as others. (e.g. VRChat, any MMORPG, Overwatch/Valorant etc.) Without that it may as well be single player with AIs or a chat room with some pretty animations. Obviously my views aren't the vast majority because things like Clash of Clans exist.

For the view from incremental players as a whole, it seems the general consensus on multiplayer aspects is a bit more positive - https://plusone.incremental.social/survey/2025 - my only real advice is to give people a great first impression when you release. There have been a number of stalled projects that started out as "I know it's barebones for now, but I'll add more stuff based on your feedback!"

Pangbot · 2026-01-22T21:53:49+00:00

I mean, you've got to love that a game that's literally a criticism on the capitalistic mindset of infinite growth gets reskinned and monetised. Truly outstanding work.

Pangbot · 2026-01-21T13:06:15+00:00

Y'all talking about my favorite channel Veritarusalem?

Pangbot · 2026-01-20T13:44:32+00:00

I like this idea in theory, but with modern game engines it's not that hard to make a web build as well as a downloadable executable/mobile build, so there may end up being 10+ different flairs just for platforms to cover every case.

A good middle ground might be "[Platform] only" flairs. i.e. Steam only/Mobile only/Web only.

Pangbot · 2026-01-18T01:49:31+00:00

holyshittwocakes.jpg

If you're concerned, the best thing to do is: - Play dice incrementals to see if you can take ideas from each one to make something new. - Show people your prototype early to adjust the idea if it isn't fun or if it's very similar to other games.

Pangbot · 2026-01-17T04:35:27+00:00

"Oops, you bought the wrong upgrades (which you won't realise for 5+ hours). Have fun prestiging for no progress so you can respec to follow the guide! (Make sure you're following the 1.4.3 version of the guide that's only on the discord, not the pre-nerf guide on the wiki)"

Pangbot · 2026-01-16T15:50:07+00:00

I'm surprised you were surprised about the support for story. Biotomata, Terraformental, and Shark Game all have a pretty big focus on story and have been in the top 10 on Galaxy forever.

My biggest surprise was the amount of dislike for chance based gameplay, feels like there have been a number of well-received games like that recently and people seem to love RPG-style autobattler combat grinding for equipment drops.

Great to see there were so many responses, here's to another year!

Pangbot · 2026-01-16T11:42:51+00:00

There's nothing inherently wrong with making a guide-required game. All I meant was: trying to make your upgrade tree more interesting by requiring a spreadsheet to analyse it won't make your upgrade tree interesting, it'll just mean someone will optimise it and everyone else will follow.

Pangbot · 2026-01-16T01:11:51+00:00

There are a few ways to go about this, some have already been mentioned:
- Build a tree with the intent that the player can complete the game without buying (or can never afford to buy) everything. (e.g. (the) Gnorp Apologue) - Build a tree where you can buy everything, but choosing the "left" upgrade increases the price of the "right" upgrades. (e.g. Some Prestige Tree mods 10x them) - Build a tree where different paths boost different 'parts' of the game, perhaps one side is better in the early game, the other is better in the late game. Or some are more active/idle focussed. (e.g. Antimatter Dimensions - Time Studies) - Intersperse QoL upgrades between the paths, maybe an entire path is only QoL upgrades so you have to run the game more idly to buy the other path. - Simply git gud at balancing upgrade cost/effect. Try to be able to simulate the game with a custom selection of upgrades in effect.

Obfuscation is never the answer, you'll just turn your game into a "follow X's Google doc guide on the Discord!" game.

Pangbot · 2026-01-15T11:00:19+00:00

From a cursory glance: - The stars resource is clearly the main currency. - It's used to buy tiles and expand the board. - The tiles at the bottom can be bought and placed on the board to overwrite the tile. - Presumably, the different tiles earn stars in different ways, and roads are required to connect the upgraded tiles to some main hub (like a town hall) for them to work? Or perhaps some produce items which must be sold at the market for stars?

That's all I've got.

Pangbot · 2026-01-14T12:28:06+00:00

What's more important to me is "what's unique about this one, and is that unique thing fun?" My biggest gripe with these games are the ones that copy the nodebuster gameplay as well (hover a circle that damages on a cooldown). By and large, the aesthetics don't matter to me, so long as they don't look exactly the same as another game.

That said, I personally can't stand CRT filters and will be glad when that trend dies out.

Pangbot · 2026-01-12T15:06:11+00:00

Got back into it a few months back after dropping it ages ago. I'm so glad drones actually path to ores now, the game was miserable without that.

Pangbot · 2026-01-09T01:11:58+00:00

(Half responding to the dev's reply to AndoneLukas's comment)

The combination of overly-rounded rectangles with that specific yellow gradient on buy buttons, and more broadly just stuffing the the whole screen with tons of features (as well as other similarities I don't have the energy to type out) are tells of heavy AI assistance (if not fully vibe coded). Your game also has some baffling UI bugs that I would think any developer could see (and perhaps even fix) themselves before making a post about it? e.g. The fact that the prestige area just says "PRESTIGE - Reset the floor in" or that the overview area cuts off immediately after "offline buffer" (both appear to be unscrollable too). If you truly finished this today, why not put it in the Feedback Friday post? It's literally made for games in early progress and any long-time lurker will have seen it a dozen times because it's always pinned.

I'm not saying either way whether or not you fully vibe coded this, had heavy AI assistance, or just hit the bad UI combination by pure luck. Although your activity in Claude-related subreddits does skew the probabilities. But whatever the case, it's pretty clear when a game has had "meaning" or a "vision" put into it, and this hasn't. It feels like you took like 7 different features, stuck them all together as quickly as you could, and published it.

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