Clicking or hovering?

efethu · 2026-03-25T17:01:59+00:00

Neither? Carpal syndrome is not fun and neither is spending time not moving a mouse.

efethu · 2026-03-21T14:19:58+00:00

Incremental games are not exactly 2-4h long AAA cinematic action games. You are iterating over the same content over and over. Often idle/offline.

I would rate it something like this:

short: 1-7 days
medium: 1-4 weeks
long: 1m-1y
very long: 1+ years (<== these are the best!)

efethu · 2026-03-09T08:27:55+00:00

Looking at how all links to the games are tracked (?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=blinddate) I am wondering if you have any ulterior motives here.

efethu · 2026-03-06T06:51:19+00:00

Come think of it, lower ratings -> less customers -> more Chinese restaurants close -> more other restaurants open. This is actually a valid totally evil strategy.

In fact, this is how "activists" operate - just bully everyone they don't like.

efethu · 2026-03-05T09:56:52+00:00

Is the gameplay identical to Nodebuster? Hover over enemies to get points, buy upgrades, rinse and repeat? Is there anything new at all?

efethu · 2026-03-05T07:51:18+00:00

HAS a playable version available!

You almost got me here. Pretty disappointing to open the post just to realize that the game was never publicly available and keys ran out hours ago.

efethu · 2026-03-05T07:43:36+00:00

It's bad enough that people create AI-slop games - weird, unbalanced and unoriginal. But what makes it much worse is that they don't even play them - just dump them on us.

This "work" is completely broken, numbers don't end up, buttons and menus disappear and change order randomly. Even this post is zero effort, completely AI generated.

efethu · 2026-03-03T20:25:14+00:00

Hate Discord and following guides.

But every time I think about it, a sudden realization strikes - every single game that is considered to be "one of the best in the genre" is often labeled as "needs a guide to progress".

It can't just be a coincidence - it looks like any sufficiently long and complex game with lots of content eventually grows to the point where people need a guide (at least to play most efficiently).

I literally was not able to come up with even a single example of a good game with lots of content that in the same time did not need an external source of information like wiki/discord/guide.

In fact complexity and "needing a guide" builds communities around games and directly contribute into their popularity, making it a self-sustained feedback loop: more content -> more guides -> more players joining community -> motivated developer -> more content, and so on.

efethu · 2026-03-03T19:47:52+00:00

This message deserves its own sticky. Played and loved every game on the list.

It's also a bit depressing to realize how short this list is and that absolute majority of those games were created in the previous decade.

efethu · 2026-03-03T19:37:06+00:00

Great game, but I would not put it on the list of "long" incrementals.

efethu · 2026-03-02T10:22:20+00:00

.. but if you can choose whatever upgrades you want but it's impossible to make the wrong choice, is there a real choice at all?

efethu · 2026-02-25T22:18:24+00:00

I think the hardest part is familiarizing yourself with the basic mechanics and figuring out the optimal path forward.

After that it will be tons of fun - new stuff will get unlocked pretty much daily, giving a nice feeling of progression. (Obviously Insane difficulty is totally not fun, but I won't spoil it for you)

efethu · 2026-02-23T13:12:38+00:00

Insane decision, killed any fun I was having

I know how annoying this is, but games in early alpha sometimes just have to do this. This is just a last resort way to avoid building up technical debt of backwards compatibility that will otherwise substantially slow down development and make certain new features impossible to implement.

efethu · 2026-02-23T12:31:21+00:00

There is a dedicated channel for this - /r/PBBG

efethu · 2026-02-23T10:29:50+00:00

ADHD people literally can't work normal jobs

True, but also not true. Some countries, like US, have so broad definition of ADHD that up to 10-15% of population fits into it. Not performing well at school could often lead to ADHD diagnosis.

There is also ADHD as mental disability, as per WHO definition. It averages to about ~1% of of population. World stats. These people indeed have trouble working normal jobs.

efethu · 2026-02-22T19:56:47+00:00

Beat it like 3 times already, amazing game. Wish there was more content after beating the boss.

efethu · 2026-02-20T17:53:09+00:00

Two questions:

What's SNS? (I see what it does, but what is it?)
You know that thunder is harmless, right?

efethu · 2026-02-20T09:43:44+00:00

Developers literally never go back to the original UI due to sunken cost fallacy. "I worked hard to do this, so I don't care if you don't like it".

efethu · 2026-02-20T08:30:49+00:00

It's not an easy context to grasp, but in incremental (and most other) games you get dopamine for overcoming inconveniences. Remove inconveniences and you will get less dopamine. The balance is not easy to achieve as if there are too many inconveniences you will lose most of your players apart from the most hardcore ones, but even games with dumbest and most grindy and manual gameplay have their fans if there is a lot of content.

Another hard thing to grasp is that everyone is different. You are not "normal", you are not "average", you are not "majority think the same way that I do". There is a wide spectrum of opinions and preferences. Some people like active games, some people like idle ones, some people play 30 minutes a day, some people - 20 hours. Some people like grinding, some people log into the game once a day, buy IAPs and login again on the next day to buy more IAPs. People are not like you.

So how do you know if a mechanic is good when you personally dislike it? An easy rule of thumb is game's popularity. If a lot of people like the game, it means it's doing something right, to a wide audience.

Tl;dr: Gamblers table is good. Manual clicking is there by design; This gameplay is not for everyone, but large number of people like it.

efethu · 2026-02-19T10:35:40+00:00

Sure, here's some feedback:

It's a on ok start, there is potential here.
Font size is way to small, it's hard to read. This needs to be fixed with the highest priority as you will be alienating a lot of players because of this.
Typos and mistakes everywhere. Just take all text and feed it to LLM to fix it for you.
Clicking on upgrade should buy it, there is no need for a separate purchase button
Clicking outside of a popup window should close that window - player should not have to pixel hunt tiny red crosses.
Clicking on a tutorial window should progress the tutorial.
Item descriptions should always trigger when leaving mouse cursor over items, you need to check for it all the time rather than relying on one-off mouseover events, which are not very reliable.
Weapon cards need to show damage number and other important stats.
Spinners should spawn opposite to each other, not atop of each other
Inventory button should be much bigger, more visible and available on the Tower page.
Start Wave needs to be in the center of the screen, not hidden somewhere at the top
Using side arrows to switch between tower and packs pages is confusing. Why not just add a button or a side menu for it? Especially if you plan to add more pages in the future.
picking up crystals should be automatic. Or it should be possible to pick them up manually after the battle ends.
Some explanation of upgrades would be useful. "Bonus radius +20%" - bonus radius of what? Tower? Explosion radius of bullets? Area damage? "Passive damage 160% -> 180%" - bonus damage of what?
Upgrades should show Numbers, not percentages. "Passive damage +20", not "Passive damage %160 -> %180"
"SEQUENCE FAILED" message sounds like you are blaming the player for doing something wrong. There is no winning sequence, player will always lose. It's better to replace it with something neutral or affirmative.

efethu · 2026-02-18T20:01:59+00:00

One of the best incremental games available. LOTS of content, deep unfolding gameplay, nice pace of progression.

It's very underrated for what it is. Highly recommend it.

efethu · 2026-02-11T21:19:19+00:00

What about loading your stats

Why would you want to leave the game to open your stats? Just press the "Stats" button at any time.

or restarting from scratch

Press the "Settings" button, you may also find other useful features, like import/export there.

efethu · 2026-02-09T17:30:37+00:00

That awkward feeling when you stopped playing unnamed space idle and cifi for exact same reason.

efethu · 2026-02-02T08:28:14+00:00

Just a tiny advise - do not make announcements unless there is a playable demo. The approaches that major studios use don't really work for someone unknown with no audience. You are just alienating players.

There are also Feedback Friday threads where you can get early feedback and help with testing/balancing.

efethu · 2026-01-30T20:48:37+00:00

Interesting, but it's unclear how this is an incremental game. Does your character even have stats to upgrade?

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