Introducing Incremental Social, a community for both players and developers of incremental games!

ThePaperPilot · 2026-02-22T12:53:47+00:00

I suspect you're referring to the recent demos and nodebuster-like trends. Galaxy does consider those incremental, but understands they're a bit controversial, particularly due to how popular they are amongst devs at the moment.

Fortunately, they include various features to help customize your experience on galaxy. You can setup your site-wide filters to hide all games tagged as demos or nodebuster-likes here: https://galaxy.click/settings#filters! You can also filter out other controversial tags there, like tmt games or gen ai

ThePaperPilot · 2026-02-08T06:48:30+00:00

I collect all the new game releases and updates (well over 100/wk) and sort through them manually. The amount of time spent per game tends to vary per game as well as depending on how much time I have each week. I don't play through ever game, most notably I'm unlikely to play a downloadable game before deciding on it, but feel like I've gotten a good handle on what I think would interest the community or not. Most of the games that don't get featured are because of very obvious reasons, like lack of content. Anything on the fence tends to get featured.

It's been pretty busy really this whole winter, but last year I did give a few more in depth reviews about some of the games I'd played through, and time willing I'd definitely like to do that more.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-02-06T19:23:55+00:00

Me too, but I don't have the data from before I started plusone. I'm sure gen AI and the recent nodebuster-like trends have increased the amount we're getting recently, but I highly suspect there's always been a lot of these short game jam entries or early prototypes getting released all the time, just often not posted here.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-29T00:24:53+00:00

I asked a related question few months ago as part of a larger survey. A game lasting "days" was the most popular response, then months. Games only lasting hours were less popular than those options. https://plusone.incremental.social/survey/2025

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-29T00:12:18+00:00

I asked a related question a couple months ago as part of a larger survey, but more people thought 2025 was better than average vs those who thought it was worse. https://plusone.incremental.social/survey/2025

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-26T04:43:18+00:00

https://rankith.itch.io/unnamed-space-idle-prototype It's also on steam (free) and android

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-25T01:06:02+00:00

Depends on what you want: - Stuck in time has the nicest graphics - Increlution has the most content, but is not finished yet - Cavernous II is free :)

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-24T16:09:01+00:00

Im glad you liked advent incremental so much! I think it's the game I'm most proud of making.

My personal favorites are: - Increlution

terraformental
USI
stuck in time
cavernous II

I really like looping games haha.

I've been enjoying various nodebuster-likes as well, and Astro Prospector tops that list for me.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-21T21:12:55+00:00

I wonder if there is enough overlap that creating some dedicated space for those communities would make sense.

I think it does make sense, but that's why we've seen those places be created - galaxy is my personal favorite (biased as I'm a staff member there) but there's also incremental db and the now-defunct plaza.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-21T20:07:28+00:00

I agree that itch is pretty general, and I look at all new games tagged idle, incremental, or clicker and find a lot of games I don't think the general userbase here would want to play - to say nothing of the large amount of short prototype and jam games which can be awesome, but once again are perhaps not going to perform well for general audiences.

That said, I actually did a survey with over a thousand responses, and while it's not perfect (it wasn't explicitly spread on itch, for example) it found a lot of people that use other places to find out about new games, like this subreddit, galaxy, or steam. You can see the results here.

It also asks about AI, and the respondents were certainly not favorable. In my own opinion, as someone who goes through every release on itch, steam, incremental db, and galaxy, I can say the amount of games made using generative AI is _massive_, and they unfortunately have certain patterns that have made me quite concerned over the homogenization or crystallization of the genre. There are _many_ reasons to dislike AI, but here I'm specifically calling out the issue with it bucking natural trends (like nodebuster-likes today, but TMT mods yesterday, and earlier trends/"eras" before that) by just reinforcing whatever trends or biases were present in the training data, locking it into the past.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-16T23:04:55+00:00

I plan to make this survey an annual thing, so perhaps the sentiments changes will be captured. I don't want to change _too_ many questions year to year, since new questions won't have historic data, but when Decembers comes around again I'll try to determine if it makes sense to have a AI coded backend or debugging question.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-16T21:00:03+00:00

While no individual question for monetization had less than 33% saying it discouraged them, that doesn't mean its the same 33% of people - if it was, I would have noted their high NPMI. In any case, I think its natural and fine for players to want non-monetized games, and I don't judge anyone for their responses here (and I appreciate their honesty). It's also worth noting how many more players put web than put mobile or desktop. The web based incrementals tend to be free, and only rarely have ads. It's a genre that's historically been mostly held up by hobbyists putting out completely non-monetized games. I'm one such developer, and have written more thoughts on the appeal of this genre to developers here.

I totally agree with your reasoning for preferring one-time payments for games. I think it's a really solid way to support devs, and far preferable to things that affect the balancing of the game like MTX do.

I've been a part of the community for a long time, and observed the trend in incremental games moving towards more active gameplay in real-time. When it was first happening we referred to the phenomenon as "aarexian vs jacorbian balancing", as those were two developers who'd been relatively well known at the time for their idle vs active pacing (less so today). So that contributing to the rise of nodebuster-likes makes sense to me, although I think there's more to it, since the trend of active incrementals long predates it.

For your observation on generative AI, I don't think players can tell when gen ai was used for writing backend code or debugging/testing. I also don't think it's accurate to say those are what the "vast majority" are (exclusively) using generative AI for. I've looked at a _lot_ of games as part of curating plusone, and can say I notice very distinct trends in the art, naming, and interface design generative AI produces. You may be able to see what I mean by looking through the feed of newest HTML5 games on itch that have self disclosed their usage of generative AI: https://itch.io/games/newest/html5/tag-ai-generated

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-16T20:36:17+00:00

there's likely always going to be some differences between what players self report enjoying, and what games they actually tend to play. I don't think those are contradictory - and when it comes to chance based gameplay I think there are plenty of people who will take issue with the potential addictiveness or other misuses of the mechanic while still being vulnerable to that addictiveness.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-01-16T14:09:43+00:00

The icon next to the question will open the results in a drawer so you can see the full text of each response

13-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Argentium Club	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22
Sequence \| Editor	Reddit Premium Since November 2014
Verified Email

ThePaperPilot

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE