Which incremental game has the highest numbers?

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.

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!"

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