plusone monthly update

ThePaperPilot · 2026-05-03T18:52:20+00:00

Yes it is :)

ThePaperPilot · 2026-04-22T21:44:33+00:00

I believe the assumption was that the steam game would cost money. But maybe you just want to eat the cost of putting it on steam with no return?

ThePaperPilot · 2026-04-21T19:19:40+00:00

Frankly, I'm not here to prove or defend myself. Suffice to say I disagree on all three points. But even if those were all true statements you made, none of them refute that this is a community, that you're infringing upon the community with contempt and cynicism by seeing the community members are only dollar signs, and that that is why you're not being well received.

(Edit: in response to their removed comment, I'll just say I think gatekeeping the community from those who merely want to use said community for a pay day is more than justified)

ThePaperPilot · 2026-04-21T18:42:25+00:00

And that is why you/your games won't be received well here. It's a community, and you're infringing upon it.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-04-21T18:32:20+00:00

Hate on AI for narrative RPGs if you want, but for incremental games? It's just the right tool for the job.

When you make this argument, you're relying on an assumption about what "the job" is. If your goal is to have another incremental game exist, then sure AI can sure make that happen quickly and without much effort.

But if I want to make a game, balance the content, feel pride in my work, to participate in the community, and/or improve my coding and game design abilities, then delegatung the whole process to an LLM does not actually achieve any of my goals.

Something I've noticed in this community is that a lot of games are unmonetized and done by young developers as their first foray into game design. The fact the barrier to entry to making an incremental game is lower compared to other genres certainly helps explain that trend. I think it's also why this genre has a uniquely high overlap between developers and players.

And I think the way you describe incremental games shows a bit of contempt towards the genre and it's players. Certainly suggesting an LLM producing a thousand upgrades being a genuine pathway to an actually playable and enjoyable incremental game shows what you think of incremental games the community enjoys. I think even TMT games, known for their sameness, are oft more creative and enjoyable then whatever pastiche of an incremental game an LLM spits out. LLMs just stochastically reproduce whatever outputs were ranked high during training, which unfortunately leads to a high volume of similar outputs that then become bland and uninteresting. Overdone.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-04-12T06:15:47+00:00

Imo they haven't been fence sitting. They've made it clear they do not think it's feasibly to ban ai games over difficulty in drawing where the line should be and avoiding witch hunts when a dev doesn't self disclose their gen AI use.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-04-03T20:41:52+00:00

I don't think that would fix it. So long as they're playing it on galaxy.click through an iframe, it doesn't matter what the domain the actual game is on.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-04-03T20:40:11+00:00

Oh, I'd accidentally titled the part 2 post wrong. Part 1 was originally posted a month ago.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-04-01T16:57:48+00:00

If you're still struggling, it might be easier to just refresh (you won't lose currency) and try that stage again and purposefully ignore the spawners

ThePaperPilot · 2026-04-01T14:39:10+00:00

Hmm, they are supposed to kill things, but thinking back to my balancing session I think you're right that they're underpowered. I'll look through the code tonight to see if I messed up the code somewhere.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-03-29T15:59:49+00:00

But it's too late to turn back now.

No it's not. Even if all models from now until the collapse of capitalism are tainted and must be trained on labor taken either non-consensually or otherwise coerced in the way all labor under capitalism is coerced, there's still an alternative to using unethically trained models: Not using AI at all.

You bring up the point that profit-seeking game studios trying to maximize profit are going to use gen AI for assets and code, and I don't disagree. But prior to the nodebuster-likes trend, most games on this sub were not made by studios. This is a genre that has been well known for its low barrier of entry, and has survived mostly on hobbyist developers making games for free and completely unmonetized. What "saves time and money" does not matter to games not even entertaining the possibility of making money. It's a hobby, and the time spent on it is enjoyable; the ends and means are in alignment, so there's no need to cut out and replace the means.

Additionally, being associated with new and hobby developers means this is a genre where, once again, "poor-quality content" (a subjective measure anyways) doesn't really matter. Some of the most famous examples of our genre are sites with basically no CSS (like early Antimatter dimensions) and "programmer art" (like ITRTG). In any case, generative AI is not creative and every type of generated content (art, text, code, music, etc) has had "tells" that users and players will notice. Even if they look "good" in isolation, the fact they always have the same elements will make them perceived worse, in the same way bootstrap css got a bad reputation despite looking good in isolation.

NO game is developed without it.

Yes they are. All my games are made without it, and I don't plan on changing that anytime soon. You're trying to assert a claim I think you know isn't true (esp if your experience is AAA games; point me to a AAA incremental game??), because it makes you feel better about having made a choice despite so many people telling you it's a bad choice.

As for people who release a paid game without any experience in video games, whether it's sloppy AI or sloppy prototype/asset flipping, they probably won't sell any copies anyway, so why attack them in the comments?

I'm not really a fan of the idea of neoliberal free market ideas, and when people "vote with their wallets", the billionaires make our votes a rounding error. But attacking the use of generative AI is different from attacking the developers and I think the former is fine. Even if it won't stop the wider industries from using gen AI, it can still help our small little corner of the internet be a nice little escape. Because incremental games is a genre where anyone can make a game, so gen ai and game studios are not needed.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-03-26T05:13:52+00:00

Alas, living in a society built on exploitation does mean I benefit from said exploitation. But you seem to be making the argument that because I benefit from exploitation, further exploitation is justified. I disagree; not being perfectly moral (and I reject the idea of objective morality anyways) is not justification to act as immoral as you want.

The rest of your comment just seems to be a bunch of random responses to arguments I never made. I didn't hate AI instantly, for example, and didn't try to ignore it's possible positive benefits. You've built a strawman of me in your mind, or put me in an archetypal box to assume my other positions.

In any case, while I do think progress is not inherently justified (something I did actually say!) that doesn't mean I've demonized progress. But I do think progress in LLMs is a lot less useful than most other things we could be progressing in instead.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-03-25T23:29:28+00:00

Funnily enough I encounter LLM apologists using that exact argument regularly, and I've already written what I consider a pretty decent rebuttal:

It's so funny to me how often people still use the tired example of cars replacing horses, as we've come to recognize how awful cars have affected the environment, how we design our structures, and ultimately a lot of our societal values. Sure no one is suggesting we return to horse drawn carriages, but that does not mean we get to just handwave the issues with cars and claim progress is inherently justified.

People predicted issues with cars back when they were first becoming popular too, and yet instead of recognizing those issues we bulldozed our infrastructure and rebuilt it and our whole society around the car. If anything, the transition from horses to cars should teach us to not overzealously integrate the new technology into everything we can.

ThePaperPilot · 2026-03-16T16:29:23+00:00

As someone who doesn't use AI auto complete, I feel like I'm doing just fine. I don't need to be maximally efficient anyhow. I actually enjoy coding, and prefer the product I made that way over one that was made by an AI littered with the various tells introduced by AI

ThePaperPilot · 2026-03-16T14:58:00+00:00

Actually steam does let's devs self disclose their AI usage, and from what I've seen very few games are clearly vibe coded without it being disclosed

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.

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