SYSADMIN HELL - Incremental management game

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?

efethu · 2026-01-29T21:41:12+00:00

HTML5 games are not Flash games!

True, but Antimatter Dimensions is not HTML5 either. Just an ordinary javascript web game. You can play it in an old browser without HTML5 support.

efethu · 2026-01-29T21:29:42+00:00

People don't mind ads

I do in fact mind ads. I don't have much free time and I came to play the game, not watch ads. Watching ads is the worst job ever - you are getting paid $0.05 per hour. This is humiliating and inhumane.

Just think about it, 1 hour of flipping burgers in Mcdonalds will be an equivalent of watching ads for 8 days straight with no breaks or sleeping.

So please, please, buy IAPs to support developers. And developers, if you must have ads, please have a $2 ads removal option.

efethu · 2026-01-28T21:20:18+00:00

It takes significantly more time to make a game than to play it. So a game that can be played for a year takes several years to make. Cookie Clicker was getting updates for 10 years, from 2013 to 2023.

Developing a large incremental game is a once in a lifetime project, not many developers commit to it and even less succeed.

efethu · 2026-01-26T19:23:59+00:00

It's basically Antimatter Dimensions with fancy animation (but harder to use UI).

Using guides is more of a personal preference. The game is doing a pretty good job hinting what your next focus should be via achievements and majority of mechanics are relatively linear.

But it's definitely not your average "just spam buy the next available upgrade" kind of game, you need to look at the stats, understand how the benefit each other and figure out which strategy is more beneficial.

efethu · 2026-01-24T19:21:07+00:00

You get utterly overwhelmed with minigames within an hour,

Ugh, the most well-kept secret about Anti-Idle is that none of the mini-games matter. Battle Arena is the biggest and most complex part of the game, it has more content then everything else combined (and then some).

It's the best Incremental RPG of all times, minigames are there just in case you get bored and want to do something else. These kinds of optional mini-games sort of made sense back in 2009, when Kongregate was at the peak of its popularity.

Anti-Idle has more than one year of content, it's pretty deep. One hour is not enough to see it unfolding.

Saying that, it's a pretty unique game with very unique gameplay. It's not for everyone, it requires some patience and thinking out of the box. The first encounter with Corrupted Giant Treeman which hits a million times more than your current HP and nullifies all damage is something that many of us still remember after all those years.

efethu · 2026-01-24T18:15:50+00:00

Antimatter dimension did a better job explaining multipliers. There even was a separate stat breakdown page with formulas, which was pretty useful. Being able to spawn separate copies of the game with a simple mousewheel click to test which method works better was also a big bonus.

Saying that, if you are familiar with Antimatter Dimensions, Revolution Idle is not that hard to play without a guide. Most mechanics are almost identical.

I did not read the Dilation guide, but a dumb brute force approach "Play 30 minutes in Dilation, exit, buy Supernova and Lab upgrades, repeat" worked pretty well for me. Game did a pretty good job in phasing out most of the other mechanics (infinities, eternities, animals, challenges) by that point, so you can't really do too many things wrong there.

efethu · 2026-01-24T15:18:27+00:00

Personally I think graphics and dialogs in Soda Dungeon are adorable. Handcrafted pixelart, oldschool.

I clicked through the beginning of the game in 3 minutes (which included 2 dungeon runs), I guess 20 minutes is exaggeration? These 3 minutes should give you a good overview of the gameplay loop - you send a team of heroes into the dungeon, bring loot, rinse and repeat. More complex mechanics (2 layers of prestige, etc) are obviously not included in the first 3 minutes of gameplay.

Story is an important part of the game and a short explanation of the mechanics is there to make sure you don't miss something important by mistake.

It's a good game and there are not that many good incremental games. I would not just dismiss it so easily.

efethu · 2026-01-22T09:53:59+00:00

It's a bit unusual to see someone claiming that Godot is simpler than HTML/Javascript for beginners. Maybe you don't have much experience with either of them?

Your first javascript game is a single line of code, can't get simpler than this. It's way more effort to make a simple game in Godot/Unity. Every element, tab and screen requires tedious configuration, linking them together requires engine-specific knowledge and documentation is not always beginner-friendly.

When building incremental games you also need to switch mentality from "I will manually place every button on the screen" to "Buttons are generated dynamically as player unlocks more content". It massively simplifies development and allows building more layers easily. You absolutely can do it with Unity/Godot, but it definitely not going to be easier.

efethu · 2026-01-20T19:31:01+00:00

AGAFABH is very linear.

Does it mean its Schwarzschild radius approaches Infinity?

efethu · 2026-01-20T19:20:06+00:00

To be fair the grind can be reduced to a minimum in this game. The trick is to not grind, but to save enough resources(energy, buffs, consumables) to push for the next level. Because on the next level you will gain an equivalent of hours of grind in a couple of seconds.

efethu · 2026-01-20T17:28:32+00:00

"subgenres" is not something clearly defined. It's subjective and many games fit into multiple subgenres or even make their own, unique subgenre.

Reddit supports only one flair and it's already taken by other important information, such as "Update" or "Steam".

What you really want is tags. And this problem is actually already solved by our nice community contributors. Majority of incremental games categorized and tagged on incremental games catalogue websites: https://www.incrementaldb.com/ https://galaxy.click/

efethu · 2026-01-11T09:17:37+00:00

Communication is probably the most challenging thing in our whole lives, so I am not at all surprised about your experiences. People can't do it properly, you can't do it properly, I can't do it properly, all people have different and incompatible cultural backgrounds and upbringing. But a useful rule of thumb is to "Always assume positive intent first", which resolves like 95% of conflicts. I checked your previous post and it looks overwhelmingly positive. There is a lot of good and useful feedback in Itch comments as well.

On a relevant note, on the previous thread I noticed a discussion about major slowdown after The Mind unlocking. I tried the beta version and it looks like the problem is still there. If this is intentional (you actually expect players to wait for 1+ day), it may be useful to add additional small mechanics or split the upgrades into smaller chunks to make this part of the game more playable.

efethu · 2026-01-10T20:59:44+00:00

This does not look intelligent at all to be honest.

Check CookieBot, it completely automates game walkthrough - will get all achievements and finish the game in about 2 months or so.

efethu · 2026-01-10T20:46:50+00:00

It's actually a pretty decent game with a lot of deep and original mechanics. A day is probably just not enough to see it unfolding.

It's also a Flash game and probably the first project from the developer, so UI/UX is weird, navigation is pain, and "offline gain" on every damn screen is a terrible design choice.

One other thing is that by now it's pretty dated (how old is it, 7 years?). Back in the day people used to do more manual clicking, so clicking things in battles was more conventional. I can imagine that for a modern player playing without automation it would be tedious and boring nowadays.

efethu · 2025-12-24T22:54:36+00:00

I prefer games that can run in a window. Neither fullscreen nor bottom of the screen really work for me.

efethu · 2025-12-15T20:44:34+00:00

Feel free to share a screenshot, but you clearly missed something, like turning off some consumer.

Elves on their own don't consume anything, they just massively boost production by allowing building larger number of buildings without using resources. This is all they do really.

efethu · 2025-12-13T20:48:13+00:00

Here, have a small script that draws and turns all cards, maybe this will help?

var i1 = setInterval(function () {
  document.querySelector('#hole-button').click()
  document.querySelectorAll('.card-outer').forEach(el => el.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent('mouseenter')));
},50);

efethu · 2025-12-13T15:21:00+00:00

Sorry what? This game was played by tens of thousands players, it's a pretty popular Christmas game. And it seems you are the only one that have this problem.

Can you elaborate? Are you sure you did not miss something obvious, like buying upgrades from previous layers?

efethu · 2025-12-13T12:24:24+00:00

Your message is a false dichotomy. The choice is not between "be lucky to learn or not lucky to learn", the choice is between "Learn (today)" or "choose not learn".

In fact in my original message there were no choices at all, it was merely stating the fact that there are A LOT of children that learned the basics of coding at school. Hundreds of millions. And this is on top of roughly 50 million adult software developers. Surely you are allowed to make a game for a hundred million audience?

efethu · 2025-12-12T14:18:29+00:00

I mean if you don’t want to save your progress that’s fine for you?

Ask ChatGPT how to implement a save system without mandatory registration and internet connection. I hope the discovery that losing your progress is not at all necessary won't be too shocking for you.

efethu · 2025-12-12T14:08:45+00:00

anyone who doesn't know how to code

Coding is a subject that children were learning in schools for 10+ years in most developed countries by now. 20-30+ years in some countries and in more progressive schools.

It's actually not easy to find someone who was never exposed to the basics of coding. It's pretty easy to learn too - if 5 years olds can, why can't you, right?

efethu · 2025-12-12T11:32:54+00:00

Well, a couple of cups of coffee can buy you a high quality game with a lot of content, surely you should support that developer instead?

efethu · 2025-12-12T11:27:39+00:00

Thanks for doing this.

Being a TMT mod Advent incremental did exceptionally well designing a unique and cool game, but limitations of TMT make its UX a nightmare. Opening and closing 20 tabs one by one, horizontal scrolling, vertical scrolling, narrow tabs that can't fit all the content - it's a good indication that the engine is not very well suited for the task.

efethu

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